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RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND 
TERRORS 


A   FAITHFUL  PICTURE    OF 

THE  RUSSIA  OF  TO-DAY 


BY 


E.    B.    LANIN 

The  Collective  Signature  of  Several  Writers  in  the 
"  Fortnightly   Review  " 


WITH  AN  ODE   BY 
ALGERNON   CHARLES   SWINBURNE 


BOSTON,   MASS. 

BENJ.    R.   TUCKER,    RUBLISHER 

1891 


TML 


CONTENTS. 

ftO*— — 

CHATTER  PACE 

I.    Lying i 

II.     Fatalism 28 

III.     Sloth 47 

I  v.    Dishonesty 66 

V.     Russian  Prisons:   The  Simple  Truth 107 

Russia  :   An  Ode 137 

VI.    Sexual  Morality  in  Russia 141 

VII.    The  Jews  in  Russia 172 

Vni.     Russian  Finance:   The  Racking  of  the  Peas.antry..  20S 

IX.    The  Russi.\n  Censure 256 


RUSSIAI^  TRAITS  AND  TERRORS. 


-o-o>*JO<>- 


CHAPTER   I. 

LYING. 

The  history  of  Russian  civilization  will,  when  written, 
furnish  the  most  striking  and  convincing  proof  of  the  theory 
advanced  by  certain  Modern  thinkers,  that  the  loftiness  or 
baseness  of  the  ethical  code  of  a  people  bears  a  strict  re- 
lation to  the  degree  of  their  intellectual  enlightenment; 
morality  being  the  ethical  equivalent  of  a  nation's  mental 
attainments.  For  the  theory  of  right  conduct  universally 
accepted  and  acted  upon  in  Russia  may  be  truly  afifirmed  to 
be  on  a  level  with  the  egotistic  principles  or  instincts  which 
determine  the  unheroic  actions  of  the  average  man  and 
woman  —  which  is  another  way  of  declaring  it  devoid  of 
ideals.  And  that  this  low  level  of  morality  is  in  perfect 
keeping  with  the  crass  ignorance  and  brutalizing  supersti- 
tion in  which  the  masses  are  still  hopelessly  plunged,  is 
abundantly  evident  to  all  who  possess  even  a  superficial 
knowledge  of  the  country  and  the  people.  Moreover,  the 
efforts  that  have  occasionally  succeeded  to  an  appreciable 
extent  in  raising  the  standard  of  morality  in  certain  circum- 
scribed districts  of  the  empire,  owe  whatever  success  they 
have  had  to  the  spread  of  knowledge  among  the  population; 
the  fluctuations  of  the  intellectual  level  having  always  made 
themselves  immediately  felt  in  the  moral  sphere.  In  this 
Russians  admirably  exemplify  the  actions  of  that  interde- 
pendence which  is  no  less  a  law  of  our  intellectual  and 
moral  faculties  than  of  our  physical  senses;  and  it  is  not 
more  natural  that  the  color  which  produces  the  deepest 
impression  on  the  sight  should  at  the  same  time  heighten 
the  intensity  and  increase  the  delicacy  of  our  hearing, 
touch;  and  taste,  than  that  the  ignor?nce,  superstition,  and 

I 


2  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

apathy  which  cloud  the  intellect,  should  keep  down  the 
standard  of  right  living  to  their  own  low  level.  What  is 
more  surprising,  however,  and  not  explicable  by  the  opera- 
tion of  any  known  law,  is  the  circumstance  that  the  lower 
classes  of  Russians  are  mostly  found  to  be  bereft  of  those 
ethical  qualities  which,  although  of  the  essence  of  all  true 
morality,  yet  have  no  traceable  connection  with  pure  intel- 
lect; such,  for  instance,  as  sensibility  to  the  appeal  of 
moral  obligation,  or  that  fervid  enthusiasm  which  is  the 
chief  ingredient  of  heroism. 

I  may  state  here,  what  should  be  obvious  enough  without 
any  express  declaration,   that  neither  these  general  asser- 
tions nor  the- facts  that  I  shall  presently  bring  forward  to 
illustrate  and  support  them,  imply  anything  in  the  nature 
of  censure  or  reproach.     To  blame  a  people  for  habits 
which  are  the  outcome  of  conditions  over  which  they  had 
practically  no  control,  would  argue  ignorance  of  their  his- 
tory and  of  the  nature  of  morality  itself.     It  would  be  just 
as  reasonable  to  condemn  the  moth  for  eating  woollen  stuffs, 
or  to  wax  indignant  at  the  depravity  of  those  female  spiders 
of  certain  species  of  Epeirides,  who  coolly  devour  the  males 
as  soon  as  the  latter  have  discharged  their  natural  functions, 
as  to  allot  praise  or  blame  for  conduct  aild  principles  which 
are  practically  as  independent  of  the  will  of  the  nation  as 
its  physical  type.     One  should  bring  to  the  study  of  the 
ways  and  habits  of  men,  no  less  than  of  animals,  if  the 
results  are  to  be  worth  having,  a  spirit  of  intelligent  curi- 
osity  equally   free    from   prejudice    and   passion.    When, 
therefore,   I  affirm   that  a  careful  survey  of  the  facts  of 
Russian  social  life  warrants  —  nay,   imperatively  calls  for 
—  the  employment  of  a  standard  of  judgment  widely  dif- 
ferent from  that  which  we    are  wont   to  apply  to  other 
European  people  —  the   Russians   being,  as  Burke   would 
say,  still  in  the  gristle,  not  yet  hardened  in  the  bone  of 
manhood  —  I  merely  state  a  fact  which  can  at  worst  dis- 
credit their  spiritual  or  political  guides,  if  proved  to  be  the 
result  of  their  negligence  or  malice.  ,  And  even  a  slight 
acquaintance  with  the  facts  of  the  case  is  sufificient  to  show 
that   an  abyss  divides  Russian  civilization  from  that  of 
Western  Europe  on  the  one  hand,  and  that  this  is,  to  a 
very  considerable  extent,  the  result  of  what  may  be  termed 
artificially  arrested  development  on  the  other, 

liy  nature  the  Russians  are  richly  endowed  :  a  keen,  subtle 
understanding ;    remarkable  quickness  of  apprehension ;  a, 


LYING.  3 

sweet,  forgiving  temper ;  an  inexhaustible  flow  of  animal 
spirits  ;  a  rude,  persuasive  eloquence/  to  which  may  be  added 
an  imitative  faculty  positively  simian  in  range  and  intensity, 
constitute  no  mean  outfit  even  for  a  people  with  the  highest 
destinies  in  store.  But  these  gifts,  destined  to  bring  forth 
abundant  fruit  under  favorable  circumstances,  are  turned 
into  curses  by  political,  social,  and  religious  conditions  which 
make  their  free  exercise  and  development  impossible,  and 
render  their  possessors  as  impersonal  as  the  Egyptians  that 
raised  Cheops,  or  the  coral-reef  builders  of  the  Pacific.  In 
result  we  have  a  good-natured,  lying,  thievish,  shiftless,  ig- 
norant mass  whom  one  is  at  times  tempted  to  connect  in 
the  same  isocultural  line  with  the  Weddas  of  India  or  the 
Bangala  of  the  Upper  Congo,  and  who  differ  from  West 
European  nations  much  as  Sir  Thomas  Browne's  vegetating 
"  creatures  of  mere  existence  "  differ  from  "  things  of  life." 
For  most  of  them,  indeed,  life,  dwarfed  to  its  narrowest  con- 
ceivable limits,  is  void  of  meaning.  Hopes,  fears,  love,  sor- 
rows (wholesome  hatred  has  no  place  in  their  composition), 
all  are  compressed  into  the  narrow  compass  of  their  relations 
to  the  various  manifestations  of  a  tyrannical  will ;  and  it  is 
no  wonder  that  the  most  healthy  moral  instincts,  those  that 
are  usually  marked  by  enduring  vitality,  are  utterly  crushed 
out  in  the  process.  The  following  incident,  illustrative  of  a 
whole  category  of  such,  will  give  some  idea  of  the  ejctent  to 
which  not  only  moral  instincts  but  plain  common  sense  are 
absorbed  by  that  brutahzing  awe  of  the  authorities  which  is 
ever  uppermost  in  the  minds  of  the  people,  hypnotizing  and 
deadening  them  to  every  human  instinct,  and  which  the 
Russian  Government  is  assiduously  striving  to  perpetuate 
and  develop.  In  the  village  of  Stepantsy  (district  of  Ka- 
nevsky)  a  peasant  hanged  himself  in  April,  1889  — a  merciful 
death  in  comparison  with  that  which  would  have  otherwise 
ended  his  sufferings.  At  the  inquiry  made  into  the  circum- 
stances of  his  death,  it  was  elicited  that  hunger  and  want 
were,  as  usual,  the  motives.  The  evidence  given  by  some 
friends  of  the  suicide  who  discovered  him  a  second  or  two 
after  he  had  tied  the  fatal  knot  is  instructive  because  emi- 


1  The  celebrated  Danish  litterateur  Georg  Brandes  has  a  very  poor  opin- 
ion of  Russian  eloquence  at  its  best  —  when  inspired  by  genuine  enthusiasm. 
This,  however,  is  not  a  question  of  personal  appreciation ;  it  is  a  matter  of 
fact,  to  the  perception  of  which  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  Russian  tongue 
is  indispensable,  and  every  one  possessed  of  this  qualification  knows  that 
the  Rusgians  ^re  natiirally  eloquent. 


4  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

nently  characteristic.     I    translate    a   portion  of  it  literally 
from  the  Russian.     "  Now  he's  stark  and  cold,"  one  witness 
remarked,  "  but  when  we  first  came  up  and  saw  him  hang- 
ing, he  was  warm  enough ;  and  he  dangled  his  legs  about  a 
good  deal.     There  was  plenty  of  life  in  him  then,  and  for  a 
good  while  after  too.     It's  gone  now."      Q.  "  Why  did  you 
not  cut  him  down  at  once?"     A.  "Cut  him  down,  is  it? 
Well,  at  first  we  were  going  to  do  it.     But  then  we  said, 
'  Best  let  him  take  the  road  he  chose  for  himself;  for  if  we 
cut  him  down  and  save  him,  wc  shall  have  to  answer  to  the 
authorities.'     So  we  let  him  hang  there.     And  he's  as  cold 
as  a  stone  now."  ^     There  are  numbers  of  Russians  whom, 
in  similar  circumstances,  fear   of  being  answerable  to  the 
authorities  would  keep  from  saving  their  own  fathers.     That 
same   awe    of  the    authorities   is   firmly  implanted   in   the 
breasts  of  most  of  the  members  of  the  educated  classes,  for 
whom  no  infamy  is  too  enormous,  if  commanded  or  desired 
by  the  Government ;  and  it  is  developed  in  them,  and  as 
fruitful  of  results,  as  that  fear  of  God  and  awe  of  their  own 
consciences  which  was  the  guiding  principle  of  English  Pur- 
itans.    "  What  is  your  view  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
gentlemen?"  the    Russian    satirist,   Schtschedrin,  makes   a 
police  official  inquire  of  two  highly  educated  Russian  Lib- 
erals who  are  disciplining  themselves  and  qualifying  for  the 
degree  of  "  loyal  "  men.     "  In  order  to  solve  this  problem 
in  a  perfectly  adequate  manner,"  is  the  orthodox  reply,  "  it 
is  absolutely  necessary  first   of  all  to  consult  the  sources. 
That  is,  to  discover  whether  we  can  lay  our  finger  upon  any 
paragraph  of  the  law,  or  even  upon  any  command  issued  by 
the  authorities,  in  virtue  of  which  we  are  authorized  to  hold 
the  soul  immortal ;  if  so,  then  there  is  no  manner  of  doubt, 
we  are  bound  to  act  in  strict  accordance  therewith  ;  but  if 
the  laws  and  precepts  contain  no  such  paragraph,  then  it  is 
incumbent  upon  us  to  await  further  orders  thereunto  apper- 
taining." '     This  is  as  true  and  accurate  an  account  of  the 
manner  in   which  the    minds    of  the    Russian   people    are 
hypnotized  by  the  central  power,  as  if  it  had  appeared  in  a 
sober  history  instead  of  a  biting  satire. 

I  Veracity,  which  has  been  justly  called  the  vital  force  of 
human  progress  —  the  one  thing  needful  in  the  journey 
onwards  and  upwards  ad  juajora  —  is  precisely  that  quality 


1  Cf.  Russian  newspapers  of  5th  April,  1889. 
3  Cf.  A  Modern  Idyll,  p.  34. 


•       LYING.  5 

in  which  Russians  are  most  hopelessly  deficient.  Indeed, 
in  that  respect  they  may  without  exaggeration  be  said  to 
outdo  the  ancient  Cretans  and  put  the  modern  Persians 
to  shame.  They  seem  constitutionally  incapable  of  grasp- 
ing the  relation  of  words  to  things,  between  which,  to 
their  seeming,  the  boundary  is  shadowy  or  wholly  imaginary  ; 
and  they  lack  in  consequence  that  reverence  for  facts  which 
lies  at  the  root  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  character.  A  Russian  can 
no  more  bow  to  a  fact,  acknowledging  it  as  final  and  de- 
cisive, than  he  can  to  a  personal  appreciation  or  a  mere 
opinion  founded  uj^on  insufficient  or  no  grounds ;  he  is  ever 
ready  to  act  in  open  defiance  of  it ;  and  the  most  serious 
statesman,  the  most  sober  thinker,  will  eagerly  start  a  dis- 
cussion on  such  topics  as  the  geographical  position  of  Java, 
Borneo,  or  Madagascar,  with  the  same  trustful,  childlike 
expectation  of  seeing  entirely  new  light  thrown  upon  it,  as  if 
it  were  of  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  or  Kant's  theory  of  time 
and  space.  A  lengthy  and  lively  conversation  was  lately 
begun  between  two  Russian  statesmen  by  the  question 
put  by  one  of  them,  a  man  who  had  governed  his  country 
for  half  a  generation  :  "  Why  do  you  suppose  that  the 
Caroline  Islands  are  not  in  the  Indian  Ocean? "  and  the 
discussion  continued  quite  as  long,  and  was  to  the  full 
as  lively,  as  if  it  were  upon  some  obscure  question  of 
metaphysics  ;  nor  did  it  once  occur  to  either  of  the  dis- 
putants to  consult  a  trustworthy  map.  This  same  airy 
independence  of  facts  is  visible  like  a  white  thread  on  a 
black  ground  in  all  departments  of  Russian  life,  public  and 
private.  Ask  a  peasant  how  many  miles  you  have  to  walk 
to  the  next  village,  and  if  you  look  footsore  and  weary  he 
will  tell  you  three  or  four.  Let  your  friend,  looking  blithe 
and  gay,  put  the  same  question  to  him  five  minutes  later, 
and  he  will  answer  fifteen.  Facts  to  him  are  purely  subjec- 
tive, and  he  arranges  them  to  his  taste,  which  is  often  ca- 
pricious, and  according  to  circumstances  which  are  ever 
varying.  "  You  lie,"  is  a  most  common  expression  in  the 
mouth  of  one  gentleman  to  another  whom  he  suspects  of 
dealing  arbitrarily  with  the  facts,  whether  deliberately  or 
inadvertently  ;  and  tlie  answer  of  the  corrected  party  is  not 
infrequently,  "  Yes,  I  do  lie  ;  it  is  as  you  say."  Instead  of 
correcting  himself  by  saying,  "I  am  mistaken,"  a  Russian, 
who  is  relating  an  incident  and  has  inadvertently  misstated 
some  trivial  fact,  will  gravely  say,  "  I  am  lying  to  you  ;  it 
was  not  so,  it  was  otherwise." 


6  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND  •TERRORS. 

It  is  quite  natural  under  such  circumstances  that  com- 
paratively little  attention  should  be  paid  to  words  as  expo- 
nents of  facts,  that  solemn  assurances  should  be  disbelieved, 
promises  distrusted,  and  calumnies  be  almost  powerless  for 
evil ;  nor  can  one  feel  astonished  at  that  strongly  marked 
tendency  to  exaggeration  which  disgusts  the  newly  arrived 
Englishman  in  Russia.  Russians  lack  the  delicacy  of  per- 
ception requisite  to  discriminate  the  degrees  that  separate 
extremes,  and  the  consequences  of  this  defect  stand  out 
in  bold  relief  in  everything  they  put  their  hands  to  :  three- 
fourths  of  the  address  on  an  envelope  are  underlined  ;  half 
a  book  is  printed  in  italics  ;  in  conversation  statements 
about  the  veriest  trifles  are  emphasized  by  tone,  pitch,  ges- 
ture. People  passionately  appeal  to  their  Creator  in  cor- 
roboration of  the  assertion  that  there  were  more  gnats  last 
year  than  this,  or  that  the  hat  you  wore  on  your  birthday 
fifteen  years  ago  was  trimmed  not  with  blue  ribbon  but 
black.  Your  ears  constantly  tingle  with  the  stereotyped 
oath,  "  Yay-ee-bo-goo "  uttered  by  the  costermonger,  the 
goods-clerk,  the  tradesman,  solemnly  taking  Almighty  God 
to  witness  that  the  ribbon  for  which  you  offer  him  sixpence 
cost  him  tenpence  half-penny ;  and  if  you  are  a  new-comer 
in  the  country  you  are  considerably  startled  to  find  half  a 
minute  later,  as  you  are  leaving  the  shop,  that  he  lets  you 
have  it  at  your  own  valuation,  and  if  you  indignantly  refuse, 
even  for  less. 

A  celebrated  Russian  General,  almost  as  well  known  in 
this  country,  where  he  has  some  enthusiastic  admirers,  as  in 
his  own,  whose  name  has  gradually  grown  synonymous  with 
that  of  liar  par  excellence,  is  erroneously  looked  upon  as  a 
contemporary  Munchausen,  the  embodiment  of  a  grotesque 
exaggeration  of  the  least  veracious  of  his  countrymen, 
whereas  in  sober  reality  he  is  merely  the  sublimated  expres- 
sion of  all  that  is  characteristic  of  the  average  Russian. 
His  verified  sayings  would,  perhaps,  if  collected  and  pub- 
lished, successfully  compete  with  the  most  popular  book  of 
Mark  Twain  or  the "  Danbury  Newsman,"  and  deservedly 
take  a  high  place  in  that  equivocal  class  of  literature,  not- 
withstanding the  circumstance  that  the  statements  of  the 
American  humorists  were  made  to  amuse,  while  those 
of  the  Russian  statesman  were  intended  to  mislead.  "  Why 
do  you  abstain  from  wine,  General?"  asked  the  host  one 
day  at  dinner,  seeing  this  Russian  diplomatist  persist  in 
filling  his  glass  with  water.     "  Because,"  interposed  one  of 


LYING.  7 

the  guests,  in  a  somewhat  loud  aside,  "//^  vino  Veritas." 
There  is  a  respectable,  but  what  our  Transatlantic  cousins 
would  term  "  shoddy "  family  in  St.  Petersburg,  consist- 
ing of  two  elderly  ladies  and  a  brother  [the  Netschaieff- 
Maltseffs],  who,  having  spent  the  best  portion  of  their  lives 
in  the  country,  suddenly  inherited  an  immense  fortune  and 
straightway  abandoned  tranquillity  and  the  province  for 
fashionable  life  in  the  capital,  where  their  simple,  artless 
ways  and  their  profound  veneration  for  the  aristocracy  are 
unfailing  sources  of  delight  to  the  blase  princes  and 
princesses  who  enjoy  their  hospitality  and  their  naivete  with 
equal  gusto.  The  General,  questioned  one  day  why  he 
never  appeared  at  their  dinners  and  balls,  replied  in  a  tone 
of  engaging  confidence  that  the  fortune  they  had  lately 
inherited  belonged  of  right  —  moral  and  legal  —  to  him,  and 
that  they  knew  it.  He  scorned,  however,  to  take  legal  pro- 
ceedings to  recover  it,  and  his  kindliness  and  gentlemanly 
feeling  forbade  him  to  awake  in  them  or  intensify  by  his 
presence  those  qualms  of  conscience  which  must,  he  knew, 
be  destructive  of  all  peace  of  mind.  Hence  he  systematically 
kept  out  of  their  way.  And  he  tells  this  story  with  such 
bland,  childlike  simplicity  and  candor,  that  some  persons 
are  to  my  knowledge  still  persuaded  of  its  truth.  It  is 
perhaps  superfluous  to  remark  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
General  has  as  much  right  —  moral  or  legal  —  to  the  prop- 
erty in  question  as  the  Tichborne  claimant  or  Buffalo  Bill,^ 
and  that,  not  being  of  insane  mind,  he  knows. 

Some  people  maintain  that  faces  never  lie.  The  clear- 
ness or  muddiness  of  the  eye,  the  tell-tale  shade  of  expres- 
sion, the  unmistakable  accents  of  sincerity  or  prevarication 
combine,  they  say,  to  stamp  every  statement  with  its  true 
moral  value.  To  this  one  can  only  reply  that  the  physiog- 
nomists who  think  thus  would  do  well  to  come  to  Russia  to 
study  faces.  There  the  most  damnable  lie,  the  lie  that 
blasts  and  kills,  is  sometimes  uttered  with  apparent  reluc- 
tance, with  visible  pity  clothed  in  a  voice  trembling  with 
compassion  —  a  voice  that  seems  to  come  from  the  heart 
and  to  go  straight  to  the  heart,  pleading,  as  it  were,  for  the 
wretched  creature  it  dooms  to  ruin.  The  features  of  the 
speaker  are  open,  manly,  noble  ;  his  expression  angelic ; 
Carlo  Dolci  would  have  been  proud  to  transfer  his  face  to 
canvas ;  and  yet  his  soul  Dante  would  have  had  a  grim 
satisfaction  in  burying  in  the  nethermost  pit  of  hell.  I 
once  had  dealings  with  a  favorable  specimen  of  the  Russian 


8  RUSSIAN   TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

peasant  —  at  least  he  was  recommended  to  me  as  such  — 
a  class  of  men  whom  until  a  few  months  ago  Panslavists 
and  Liberals  vied  with  each  other  in  idealizing,  and  who 
are  still  regarded  by  most  educated  Russians  as  inarticulate 
Homers,  potential  Napoleons,  undeveloped  Charlemagnes, 
obscure  Bayards  —  a  view  which  I  cannot  term  utterly 
groundless.  He  was  a  giant  in  size  and  an  angel  in  look, 
and  his  features  seemed  of  pellucid  crystal  through  which 
his  soul  shone  visible  and  pure.  The  late  Edward  Fitz- 
Gerald  would  have  called  him  "  a  grand,  tender  soul  lodged 
in  a  suitable  carcass."  He  was  a  member  of  an  artel — a 
sort  of  Russian  trades  union  —  to  which  I  had  entrusted  the 
removal  of  some  personal  property  to  a  distant  city.  After 
a  few  conversations  he  charmed  me.  So  much  practical 
wisdom,  such  perfect  tact  and  nobility  of  soul  in  one  so 
untutored,  seemed  like  the  realization  of  a  miracle.  I 
could  not  look  upon  him  without  comparing  him  with  a 
huge  uncut  diamond  of  untold  price.  I  soon  learned  to 
trust  him  as  a  brother,  and  when  he  presented  his  bill  for 
payment,  though  I  winced  on  seeing  so  many  extras,  I  paid 
the  money  unhesitatingly  and  without  remark.  Embold- 
ened by  this  he  went  on  to  mention  in  a  very  casual  manner 
an  item  of  £^2)'^  insurance  money  which  he  had  forgotten, 
he  said,  to  include  in  the  estimate  or  mention  in  the  con- 
tract. Here,  however,  I  drew  the  line  and  flatly  refused 
►  to  pay,  my  belief  in  his  honesty  becoming  mere  notional 
assent.  He  looked  at  me  for  a  long  time  in  silent  sadness, 
then  tried  to  speak,  but  his  voice  faltered  and  he  burst  into 
tears,  and  Goliath  that  he  was  wept  like  a  helpless  child  for 
nearly  half  a  day,  bitterly  bewailing  his  impending  ruin  and 
that  of  his  large  family  in  the  picturesciue  and  forcible 
language  of  a  child  of  nature.  The  servants  involuntarily 
wept  with  him  ;  perfect  strangers  espoused  his  cause  and 
joined  in.  I  thought  myself  that  I  felt  something  like  a  film 
gathering  over  my  own  eyes  at  last.  I  had  already  paid 
more  than  1  was  bound  to  pay  by  the  terms  of  the  contract, 
and  ;^30  more  seemed  a  large  sum  to  throw  away,  as  it 
were.  Yet  I  would  not  willingly  contribute  to  ruin  an  un- 
offending man  with  a  large  family,  merely  because  he  had 
been  guilty  of  an  oversight  in  my  favor  and  to  his  own 
prejudice.  So  I  finally  handed  him  the  money  in  return 
for  a  receipt.  A  week  later  I  learned  that  not  an  article 
had  been  insured  by  him  ;  two  months  afterwards  I  dis- 
covered that  this  angel  in  human  form  hajd  fleeced  quite  a 


LYING.  9 

flock  of  easy-going  persons  who  believed  in  undeveloped 
Charlemagnes  and  peasant  Bayards ;  that  he  was  a  regular 
embezzler,  an  inimitable  comedian,  who  could  draw  tears 
from  a  stone  and  money  from  a  miser. 

Apart  from  cases  of  this  kind,  which  in  commercial  deal- 
ings are  extremely  frequent,  a  Russian,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered in  mitigation,  is  not  conscious  of  guilt  when  telling  a 
deliberate  untruth.  It  is  very  doubtful  whether,  even  in 
such  aggravated  instances  as  the  above,  he  is  really  con- 
scious that  he  is  violating  any  law  human  or  divine.  For  it 
should  not  be  forgotten  that  he  is  suffering  from  complete 
anaesthesia  of  that  moral  f.Tculty  which  in  more  or  less- 
developed  peoples  is  so  prompt  to  condemn  lying.  To  a 
Russian  words  are  his  own,  and  he  simply  does  what  he 
likes  with  them,  thus  exercising  an  indefeasible  right  which 
he  freely  concedes  to  others.  Being  superstitious  and  im- 
pressionable, he  attaches  great  weight  to  religious  and 
other  ceremonies ;  and  the  complicated  formalities  with 
which  an  oath  is  sometimes  administered  —  formalities 
occasionally  as  solemn  as  those  that  accompanied  Harold's 
oath  to  William  of  Normandy  —  will  at  times  determine  a 
man  to  change  a  specious  and  elaborate  lie  into  a  simple 
statement  of  facts.  Notwithstanding  this,  however,  perjury 
is  extremely  rife  in  Russia ;  indeed,  I  fear  that  the  facts 
which  will  be  set  forth  in  another  paper  will  show  it  to  be 
an  acknowledged  and  indispensable  institution  in  the  social^ 
life  of  the  country  as  now  constituted,  regularly  and  more 
or  less  satisfactorily  discharging  certain  functions  for  which 
no  other  machinery  at  present  exists.  "  You  can  get  as 
many  witnesses  as  you  like,"  we  are  gravely  informed  by 
the  most  accredited  organs  of  the  Russian  press,  "  for  a 
measure  of  vodka;  witnesses  who  will  go  anywhere  and 
testify  to  anything  you  tell  them."  ^  "  In  Lodz  an  admirably 
organized  band  exists  for  the  purpose  of  bearing  false  wit- 
ness," says  the  journal  Svett  "  The  affairs  of  this  gang  are 
in  a  prosperous  condition  ;  for  those  classes  of  the  popula- 
tion which  have  need  of  their  services  remunerate  the  mem- 
bers of  this  curious  institution  on  a  liberal  scale.  The  chief 
of  the  gang  has  drawn  uj)  a  tariff:  for  evidence  in  a  case 
of  slander  three  roubles  (about  six  shillings)  ; "  in  cases  of 
violence  to  the  person   from  five   to  fifty  roubles,  and  so 


1  Cf.  Giansc/iJaiiin,  April  15th,  i88q. 

2  Labor  is  comparatively  cheap  in  Russia. 


lO  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

on."  ^     "  If  I  wanted  three  or  four  perjurers/'  said  a  friend 
of  mine  once   to  me  when  speaking  on  this  question,  "  I 
am  acquainted  with  two  lawyers  of  whom  I  might  bespeak 
them,  without  euphemistic  paraphrase  or  apprehension  of 
failure."     The  journal  Svett,  which  has  devoted  so  much 
of  its  space  from  time   to  time  to  show  up  this  strange 
state  of  things,  for  which  the  Government  is  mainly  respon- 
sible, is  yet  highly  indignant  whenever  criminal  judges  of 
the  Lutheran  persuasion,  accustomed  to  a  high  standard  of 
truth,  express  doubts  of  the  veracity  of  witnesses  belonging 
to  the  orthodox  Church.     Whether  in   the   following  case 
the  hesitation  of  the  judges  or  the  wrath  which  it  roused 
in  the  Svett  is  more  intelligible  may  safely  be  left  to  the 
judgment  of  the  reader.     A  person  occupying  a  responsible 
position  in  the  capital  of  one  of  the  Baltic  provinces  prose- 
cuted a  servant  for  theft  and  incivility,  and  produced  two 
witnesses  —  members  of  the  orthodox  Church  —  to  prove 
the  charges.     Having  heard  the  case   for  the  prosecution, 
the  judge  declared  that  he  felt  unable  to  act  upon  the  testi- 
mony of  the  two  Russian  witnesses,  and  dismissed  the  case ; 
nor  did  he  reopen  it  until  a  fresh  witness  —  a  Lutheran  — 
was   produced,-  when   the   prisoner   was    condemned   and 
punished.     For  Lutheran  judges  —  Finnish  and  German  — 
have  been  taught  by  long  experience  that  average  Russians, 
like  the  prophet  Jeremiah's  beloved  people,  "bend  their 
tongues  like  their  bow  for  lies,"  and  are  "  not  valiant  for  the 
truth  upon  earth." 

Whatever  blame  may  appear  to  attach  to  this  wholesale 
demoralization  of  a  people  capable  of  quite  other  things 
should  fi^ll  almost  entirely  upon  the  Government,  which,  as 
will  be  shown  later  on,  directly  and  deliberately  encourages 
and  fosters  this  unveracity  and  makes  itself  answerable  for 
the  result.  Unfortunately  the  very  Bayards  and  Washing- 
tons  of  Russia,  those  guiding  spirits  who  serve  as  a  pillar 
of  cloud  by  day  and  a  pillar  of  fire  by  night  to  the  people 
wandering  wearily  through  the  wilderness  of  despotism  and 
ignorance,  even  they  are  deeply  marked  with  this  national 
trait.  Born  into  the  world  tainted  with  this  original  sin,  it 
never   wholly  leaves  them,  but  breaks  out  at   unexpected 

"^  Svett,  5th  Februar)%  1889.  It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  the  journal 
is  describing  not  something  that  has  been  and  is  now  no  more,  but  a 
phenomenon  that  still  exists  and  is  developing,  and  is  one  of  the  complex 
forces  of  modern  social  life  in  Russia. 

•^ Svett,  20th  June,  1889. 


LYING.  1 1 

seasons  and  in  unforeseen  ways  to  the  amazement  of  Euro- 
peans, who  are  at  a  loss  to  account  for  the  mystery.  What, 
for  instance,  would  be  said  and  thought  in  England  of  a 
gentleman  of  culture,  a  scholar,  a  university  professor,  a 
modern  Samuel  chosen  from  among  millions  to  instil  princi- 
ples of  truth  and  honesty  into  the  tender  mind  of  his  future 
emperor,  who  systematically  lied  in  the  most  solemn  manner 
imaginable ;  who  in  a  text-book  on  civil  law  written  for  his 
students,  deliberately  ignored  the  vast  judicial  reforms  which 
constitute  one  of  the  most  durable  and  solid  services  that  the 
late  Emperor  rendered  his  subjects  ;  and  this  simply  because 
he  disapproved  them?  Suppose  a  work  were  written  in 
this  country  in  the  year  1884  on  the  machinery  of  English 
law  courts,  to  serve  as  a  text-book  for  students,  in  which  the 
author  purposely  omitted  to  treat  the  Judicature  Acts,  passed 
during  the  Chancellorship  of  Lord  Selborne,  as  accomplished 
facts,  out  of  prejudice  against  the  party  to  which  Lord  Sel- 
borne belonged ;  spoke  of  the  old  system  of  pleading,  pro- 
cedure, and  appeal  as  still  in  existence  ;  cited  earlier  and 
now  obsolete  statutes  as  still  in  force,  and  allowed  his  book 
to  go  through  three  editions  in  the  space  of  several  years  without 
changing  an  iota,  knowing  that  it  was  being  made  practically 
obligatory  for  all  students  in  the  Empire ;  what,  I  ask, 
would  be  said  and  thought  of  such  a  man  in  England  ?  In 
Russia  he  was  first  made  tutor  to  the  Prince  Imperial,  now 
the  Czar  Alexander  III.,  and  then  appointed  virtual  head 
of  the  orthodox  Church,  Ober-Procuror  of  the  Most  Holy 
Synod,  for  the  gentleman  in  question  is  M.  Pobedonostseff.^ 
To  give  some  idea  of  the  extent  to  which  this  scholar  carries 
his  dislike  of  the  reforms  of  the  late  Emperor,  and  his  for- 
getfulness  of  the  requirements  of  truth,  I  may  mention  that 
he  gravely  declares  that  according  to  the  laws  in  force  in  the 
year  1883,  a  man  or  woman  may  be  still  disposed  of  by 
testament  or  by  deed  of  sale.- 

1  "  According  to  the  laws  now  in  force  every  actual  possession  of  real  es- 
tate, even  though  illegal,  is  deemed  undisputed,  and  is  protected  by  the  law 
against  violence,  until  a  claim  is  preferred  or  a  suit  begun,  and  the  estate 
adjudged  to  belong  to  another."  [Here  follow  citations  from  old  obsolete 
statutes.]  —  Course  of  Civil  Law,  by  K.  Pobedonostseff,  3d  edition,  1883,  p. 
168,  etc.      This  is  but  one  of  innumerable  instances. 

2  In  the  following  passage,  for  instance:  "Things  capable  of  being  pos- 
sessed are :  ist.  Documents  testifying  to  the  entry  into  possession,  if  the 
thing  is  of  such  a  nature  that  it  cannot  be  delivered  up  otherwise  than  by 
document,  even  though  it  be  personal  estate,  as  a  ship,  a  sea-faring  vessel, 
serfs  who  have  no  land."  —  Course  of  Civil  Law,  3d  edition,  1883,  ist  Part, 
p.  44. 


12  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

Examples  of  this  systematic  unveracity  are  as  numerous 
as  the  sands  of  the  sea ;  there  is  an  emharras  de  richesse. 
They  may  be  conveniently  summed  up  in  the  saying  of  the 
Russian  poet  Testscheff:  "The  thought  expressed  is  already 
a  lie."  Turghenieff  was  in  most  respects  one  of  the  most 
typical  of  educated  Russians,  gifted  in  an  eminent  degree 
with  the  good  qualities,  and  not  lacking  those  of  the  bad 
which  distinguish  his  countrymen,  and  which  a  life-long 
sojourn  among  cultured  foreigners  did  not  suffice  to  rub  off. 
One  or  two  instances,  therefore,  of  the  value  which  he  was 
wont  to  set  upon  his  pledged  word,  his  solemn  promise, 
will  do  more  to  give  English  readers  an  insight  into  the 
Russian  theory  and  practice  on  this  subject  than  whole 
pages  of  careful  psychological  analysis.  The  great  Russian 
novelist  was  a  re  gular  contributor  to  the  Contemporary  —  a 
Russian  monthly  magazine  —  and  once,  when  it  was  on  the 
eve  of  bankruptcy,  the  novelist,  being  in  pressing  need  of 
money,  asked  the  editor  for  an  advance  of  2,000  roubles. 
The  editor  hesitated,  was  about  to  refuse,  but  the  contributor 
clenched  the  matter  by  saying :  "  I  am  in  sore  need  of  this 
sum  ;  if  you  do  not  let  me  have  it,  I  shall  be  compelled,  to 

^  my  great  regret,  to  go  and  sell  myself  to  the  Memoirs  of  the 
Fatherland  (a  rival  review),  and  you  will  not  soon  get  any 
of  my  productions  again."  This  threat  worked.  The  editor 
obtained  the  money,  we  are  told  by  the  eye-witness  who  tells 
this  story,  "  through  my  intervention  and  under  my  guar- 
antee." Soon  afterwards  Turghenieff,  who  had  solemnly 
l)romised  to  send  a  story  for  the  forthcoming  issue  of  the 
review,  failed  to  keep  his  word,  and  had  not  come  to  the 
office  for  a  whole  week  previous  to  the  latest  day  fixed  for 
sending  it,  though  he  was  wont  to  come  every  day  and  dine 
or  take  tea  at  the  office.  The  editor  grew  nervous ;  drove 
over  twice  to  see  him,  but  not  finding  him  at  home,  forwarded 
him  a  note,  imploring  him  to  send  the  manuscript  without 
delay.  Turghenieff  came,  and  walking  into  the  office  said  : 
"  Abuse  me,  gentlemen,  as  badly  as  you  like ;  I  know  that  I 
have  treated  you  very  scurvily,  but  what  could  I  do  ?  An 
unpleasant  thing  has  happened  to  me  .  .  .  and  I  cannot 
give  you  the  story  that  I  promised.  I'll  write  another  for 
the  following  number."  This  statement  took  away  the 
breath  of  the  two  editors  Nekrasoff  and  Punaieff.  At  first 
they  were  silent  —  lost  in  amazement  —  then  they  bom- 
barded   him    with    <]uestions :    "  I   was  ashamed    to   show 

"*myself,"  he  explained,  "  but  I  deem  it  puerile  to  deceive 


LYING.  13 

you  an)-  longer,  and  thus  delay  the  printing  of  the  review. 
I  have  come  to  ask  you  to  insert  something  else.  I  give 
you  my  word  of  honor  that  I  will  write  something  for  the 
following  number."  "Why?  why?"  asked  the  editor. 
"  Will  you  first  promise  not  to  reproach  me  if  1  tell  you?" 
"  Yes,  yes  ;  we  promise  ;  say  on."  "  Well,  I  loathe  myself 
for  what  I  have  done.  I  have  sold  the  story  that  I  prom- 
ised you  to  the  Memoirs  of  the  Fatherland.  Now  execute 
me.  I  was  in  sore  need  of  500  roubles.  It  would  have 
been  impolite  to  come  to  ask  you  for  the  money,  as  I  have 
tlone  too  little  for  the  2,000  roubles  you  lately  gave  me." 
"  Is  your  manuscript  already  in  the  hands  of  the  editor  of 
the  Memoirs  of  the  Fatherland?''  was  NekrasofPs  next 
question.  "  Not  yet,"  was  TurgheniefPs  reply.  NekrasofPs 
countenance  suddenly  beamed,  and  opening  his  desk,  he 
took  500  roubles  from  one  of  the  drawers  and  handed  them 
to  Turghenieff,  saying,  "  Here,  take  this,  and  write  him  a 
letter  of  apology."  The  novelist  hesitated,  but  at  last  said  : 
"  Gentlemen,  you  are  placing  me  in  a  stupid  position.  .  .  . 
I  am  a  miserable  man.  ...  I  deserve  a  flogging  for  my 
weak  character.  Let  Nekrasoff"  write  a  letter  of  apology. 
...  I  will  copy  it  and  send  it  with  the  money."  Then  to 
Nekrasoff:  "Smear  Krai'effsky's  (the  editor  of  the  rival 
review)  lips  with  the  honey  of  promises.  Tell  him  I  shall 
soon  write  another  story  for  him.  I  can  well  picture  to 
myself  his  black  disappointed  face  when  reading  my 
letter."  ^ 

Another  habit  of  TurgheniefPs  was  to  invite  friends  to 
dimier  and  be  absent  when  they  came,  not  deliberately  of 
set  purpose,  but  because  of  the  httle  value  he  set  on  his 
pledged  word,  and  the  very  faint  impression  it  used  to  make 
upon  his  mind.  He  once  invited  the  famous  critic  Belinsky 
and  five  others  to  dine  with  him  at  his  house  in  the  country, 
where  he  had  a  chef  de  cuisine  whom  he  looked  upon  as  a 
genius.  "  I  will  organize  a  banquet  for  you,  the  like  of 
which  you  never  dreamt  of."  He  fixed  the  day,  and  made 
each  person  give  his  word  of  honor  that  he  would  come. 
"  Don't  fear  for  us,"  remarked  Belinsky.  "  We  shall  be 
there  without  fail ;  but  you  must  not  repeat  the  trick  that 
you  played  upon  us  last  winter,  when  you  asked  us  to  dine 
and  were  not  at  home  when  we  came ;  but  lest  you  should 
forget  your  invitation,  I  shall  write  to  you  on  the  eve  of  the 

1  Qi,  HUtorical  Messenger  (a  monthly  review),  May,  1889. 


14  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

day  of  our  arrival."  "  It  was  a  sultry  day  when  the  whole 
six  of  us  set  out  for  Pargolovo  in  an  open  caleche  at  eleven 
o'clock  in  the  morning,"  says  one  of  the  persons  invited. 
"  We  were  thoroughly  fatigued  by  the  heat  and  dust  of  the 
road.  Arrived  at  Turghenieffs  country  house  we  alighted 
with  joy  in  our  countenances,  but  we  were  all  struck  with  the 
circumstance  that  Turghenieff  did  not  come  out  to  meet  us. 
We  knocked  at  the  door  of  the  glass  terrace.  The  silence  of 
death  reigned  in  the  house.  All  our  faces  grew  visibly 
longer.  '  Can  Turghenieff  have  played  the  same  trick  as 
last  winter?' exclaimed  Belinsky.  But  we  all  calmed  him, 
saying  that  we  probably  arrived  earlier  than  we  were 
expected.  '  But  I  wrote  to  him  that  we  should  be  here  at 
one  o'clock,'  objected  Belinsky,  '  what  can  it  mean?  If  they 
would  only  admit  us  into  the  room  we  could  wait,  but  here 
we  are  scorched.'  At  length  a  boy  came  out  of  the  door 
and  we  all  plied  him  with  questions.  His  master  had  gone 
off,  he  said,  and  the  chef  de  cuisine  was  in  some  public- 
house.  We  gave  the  urchin  money,  sent  him  to  fetch  the 
chef  who  should  let  us  in,  and  meanwhile  we  sat  down  on 
the  steps  of  the  terrace.  We  waited  long  in  vain.  Belinsky 
wanted  us  to  return,  but  our  hired  coachman  refused  to  take 
us  back  until  the  horses  had  had  a  long  rest.  So  we  sat  on, 
hungry  and  hot.  Panaieff  went  to  the  public-house  to  see  if 
anything  eatable  could  be  procured,  but  there  was  nothing 
to  be  had.  ...  At  last  the  chef  made  his  appearance. 
*  Where  is  your  master? '  cried  Belinsky.  He  did  not  know. 
'  Did  not  your  master  order  a  dinner  for  us  to-day? '  insisted 
the  critic.  '  He  did  nothing  of  the  kind,'  was  the  reply. 
Amazement  and  terror  were  depicted  on  all  faces.  Belinsky 
flamed  up,  and  looking  at  us  in  his  significant  way,  ex- 
claimed, '  Turghenieff  has  indeed  given  us  a  banquet  ! '  "  ^ 

These  things — ^  which  are  but  samples  and  not  by  any 
means  the  worst  —  need  no  comment.  Taken  absolutely 
they  indicate  the  width  of  the  gulf  that  divides  the  views 
on  veracity  in  particular  and  morality  in  general  which 
are  current  in  this  country  from  those  prevalent  in  Russia, 
and  considered  as  the  genuine  characteristics  of  a  man  of 
Turghenieffs  truly  excellent  disposition  and  noble  aspira- 
tions, they  amply  confirm  Pascal's  thesis  that  morality  — 
and  the  great  novelist  was  from  a  Russian  point  of  view  a 


1  Cf.  Historical  Messenger,  February,  1889,  and  Novoye   Vreviya,  12th 
March,  1889. 


LYING.  15 

highly  moral  man  —  changes  its  aspects  with  the  climates 
in  which  it  is  cultivated.  This  fact  has  never  been  acknowl- 
edged fully  and  frankly  enough  by  those  who  sit  in  judg- 
ment on  foreign  men  of  note,  and  are  wont  to  look  upon 
Mrs.  Grundy's  maxims  as  the  only  standpoint  whence 
everything  and  everyone  should  be  judged  without  appeal. 
Does  the  weeping  willow  violate  a  law  of  nature  in  grow- 
ing downwards  or  Australian  cherries  in  wearing  their  stones 
on  the  outside?  Was  Epictetus  depraved  because  he  made 
no  attempt  to  realize  certain  of  the  ideals  put  forward  in 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  or  Julian  the  Philosopher  im- 
moral because  in  the  absence  of  the  sun  and  moon  he 
shaped  his  course  by  the  light  of  the  stars  ? 

Whatever  the  causes  of  this  unveracity  —  and  they  are 
numerous  and  complicated  —  it  has  struck  deep  roots  in 
the  Russian  character,  and  it  would  need  the  Herculean 
labors  of  many  generations  of  earnest  men  to  eradicate  it. 
If  a  prophet,  as  in  olden  times,  were  to  rise  up  among  the 
people,  and  show  them  whither  this  was  leading  them ; 
were  he  furthermore  fortunate  enough  to  inspire  them  with 
a  sincere  desire  of  mending  their  ways,  they  are  and  would 
necessarily  remain  powerless  to  carry  out  their  wish  as  long 
as  those  who  govern  them  pursue  a  policy  which  is  avowedly 
dependent  for  success  on  the  crassest  ignorance  of  the 
masses  and  the  absence,  in  their  intellectual  outfit,  of  a  rudi- 
mentary sense  of  duty.  As  the  Russian  satirist  Schtschedrin 
said  :  "  I^,  has  been  ordained  on  high,  by  the  powers  that 
be,  that  if  a  man  is  uneducated  he  is  bound  to  work  with 
his  hands ;  and  if  a  man  is  educated,  his  duty  is  to  take 
pleasant  walks  and  to  eat.  Otherwise  there  would  be  a 
revolution." '  No  man,  whatever  his  calling,  whatever  his 
religious,  political,  or  social  convictions,  can  at  present  live 
and  prosper  in  Russia  without  constantly  paying  a  heavy 
tribute  to  the  father  of  falsehood,  the  patron  of  the  Empire. 
Take  a  journalist,  for  instance.  He  lives,  moves,  and  has 
his  being  in  an  atmosphere  of  hypocrisy  and  deceit  which 
would  prove  quickly  fatal  to  the  toughest  moral  nature  of 
the  west.  Ibsen's  Hovstad  and  Billing  of  the  People's 
Messenger  are  models  of  fidelity  to  principles,  positive 
angels  of  integrity,  in  comparison  with  the  average  editor 
of  a  Russian  journal,  and  this,  though  the  latter  does  not 
cease   to   retain   and  develop  those  other  moral  qualities 


1  A  Modern  Idyll,  p.  28. 


l6  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

which  favorably  distinguish  him  from  the  majority  of  his 
countrymen.  Suppose  this  Russian  journaHst  pubHshes  an 
article  with  the  Censor's  imprimatur.  If  it  possesses  iny 
real  merit,  it  is  almost  certain  to  be  denounced  by  a  zealous 
official,  a  mischievous  busybody,  or  an  envious  rival,  who 
writes  to  some  one  in  authority,  attributing  a  hidden  mean- 
incr  to  it.  The  Minister  at  once  calls  the  Censor-Oeneral 
to  account,  who  in  his  turn  summons  and  censures  his  sub- 
ordinates. The  official  who  signed  the  imprimatur  is  dis- 
missed or  severely  reprimanded,  and  the  writer  of  the 
obnoxious  article  is  sent  for  and  treated  more  like  a  dog 
than  a  human  being.  He  gladly  draws  up  a  document, 
solemnly  assuring  the  authorities  that  not  one  of  the  obvious 
meanings  of  the  passages  objected  to  was  his,  and  that 
nothing  was  further  from  his  intention  than  to  insinuate  that 
anything  in  the  administration  needed  improvement.  The 
next  day  he  publishes  an  article  embodying  his  recantation 
and  branding  the  principles  laid  down  in  the  obnoxious 
paper  as  infamous.  And  a  month  afterwards  he  returns 
to  his  old  sins  of  suggestion,  insinuation,  and  writing  between 
the  lines,  which  may  possibly  again  pass  unnoticed  for  an 
indefinite  period.  The  unfortunate  journalist  is  compelled 
daily,  nay  hourly,  to  sell  his  soul  that  his  body  may  not 
perish  —  if,  indeed,  that  be  the  summing  up  of  his  life's  pur- 
pose—  or  that  he  may  do  some  little  good  to  his  fellow- 
;nen,  if,  as  one  may  charitably  hope,  that  is  his  object  in 
doing  and  sufferings  Under  such  circumstance*  political 
and  religious  apostasy  is  of  every-day  occurrence  ;  nor  does 
it  take  moral  rank  among  crimes  or  sins ;  it  is  a  result  of 
the  law  of  political  gravitation,  to  which  all  Russians  are 
subject  alike,  everything  drawing  the  journalist  to  the  side 
of  power ;  life,  on  the  other  side  being  only  for  the  extinct 
race  of  heroes 'and  martyrs,  or  for  those  vain  creatures  who 
deem  the  doubtful  good  which  their  words  can  effect  cheap 
at  the  price  of  daily  hypocrisy.  One  is  naturally  astonished 
at  the  Escobar-like  immorality  of  Diderot,  who,  with  perfect 
coolness  and  composure,  swore  that  he  had  no  hand  in  the 
composition  of  the  Letters  to  the  Blind,  of  which  he  was  the 
sole  author.  This,  however,  was  an  exceptional  occurrence 
in  that  jihilosopher's  life,  and  an  oath,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered, was  no  more  to  him  than  a  simple  affirmation.  But 
in  Russia  there  are  journalists  who  insert  theological  ser- 
mons unabridged  in  their  newspapers,  and  profess  firm 
belief  in  the  truths  they  contain,  and  yet  regard  5UcR  hate- 


LYING.  17 

fill  prevarications  and  never-ending  tissues  of  lies  as  part 
of  their  daily  work  which  they  ask  God  to  bless  and  their 
fellow-citizens  to  admire. 

JournaHsts,  however,  are  not  alone.     There  is  scarcely  a 
human  being  in  all  Russia  who  has  it  in  his  power  to  consist- 
ently shape  his  living  and  working  in  accordance  with  the 
elementary  principles  of  morality.     A  hero,  no  doubt,  could 
accomplish  it ;  a  John  the  Baptist,  a  Fabricius,  a  Regulus ; 
but  heroes  are  uncommonly  scarce  in  the  empire    of  the 
Czars,  where  autocracy,  like  a  scythe,  has  been  for  ages 
occupied  in  cutting  down  every  head  that  presumed  to  raise 
itself  above  the  low  level  of  the  common  herd.     The  aver- 
age man  makes  no  effort  to  be  consistent.     The  conception 
of  the  unity  of  human  life  is  unknown  there,  existence  being 
but  an  amalgam  of  fragments,  heterogeneous,  accidental, 
mutually  inimical,  the  ever- varying   combination  of  which 
determines  the  man's  character  at  a  given  moment.     Thus 
there  are  nominal  members  of  the  Orthodox  Russian  Church 
who  have  no  more  faith  in  the  truth  of  its  doctrines  or  the 
efficacy  of  its  sacraments  than  in  the  stoicism  of  Epictetus 
or  the  teaching  of  Laou-tsze  :  some,  because  they  have  lost 
faith  in  the  supernatural ;  others,  because  they  are  at  heart 
Jews,  -Catholics,  Lutherans,  Dissenters.     Yet  they  are  one 
and  all  compelled  to  stretch  their  consciences  on  the  Pro- 
crustean bed  of  orthodoxy,  and,  what  is  stranger  still,  most 
of  them  comply  with  but  the  ghost  of  a  struggle.     Many  of  ' 
them  receive  the  sacraments  of  confession  and  communion 
from  the  Orthodox  popes,  thus  committing  an  act  of  sacri- 
lege—  one  of  the  most  heinous  sins  in  the  long  catalogue  df 
religious  crimes,  which  it  is  their  constant  endeavor  to  avoid. 
Jews,  for  instance,  are  positively  driven  in  thousands  "  into 
the  true  fold  "  by  measures  which  Julian  would  have  scorned 
to  employ,  and  which  even  the  popes  who  maintained  most 
zealously    Holy   Cross    Day   in    Rome    would    have    been 
ashamed  to  countenance.     They  have  to  blacken  their  souls 
•.vith  falsehood,  bowing  down  and  worshipping  strange  gods 
in  whom  they  believe  not.    I  am  personally  acquainted  with 
several  young  men,  once  honest  Jews  and   now  spurious 
Christians,  whose  sentiments  towards  their  adopted  Church 
resemble  those  which  a  young  healthy  man  might  be  sup- 
posed to  entertain  towards  the  corpse  strapped  on  his  back 
for  the  remainder  of  his  life.    Even  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra's  "Song 
of  Death"  is  too  feeble  to  adequately  express  the  boundless 
hate  and  unutterable  loathing  which  they  feel  for  their  new  ^ 


l8  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

spiritual  and  old  political  guides.  It  is  thus  no  uncommon 
thing  for  a  man's  life  to  be  turned  into  one  continued  abom- 
inable lie  ;  it  is,  on  the  other  hand,  extremely  uncommon 
for  any  one  to  think  a  bit  the  worse  of  him  on  that  account ; 
whether  the  proximate  cause  of  this  profanation  be  dire  ne- 
cessity or  mere  avarice.  When  a  forest  is  being  hewn  down, 
says  a  Russian  proverb,  the  chips  fly  about  in  abundance ; 
nor  does  any  one  stop  to  inquire  from  which  of  the  trees 
they  are  falling. 

Since  M.  Pobedonostseff  has  taken  up  the  reins  of  Church 
government  in  Russia,  unrecognized  talents,  slighted  merits, 
deserved  misfortune,  all  are  wont  to  seek,  and  generally  to 
find,  in  religion,  not  a  spiritual  consolation  for  the  rebuffs  of 
mankind,  but  a  vulgar  stepping-stone  to  advancement.  I 
have  known  the  editor  of  a  newspaper,  which  was  about  lo 
disappear  for  want  of  subscribers,  to  fall  back  upon  religion 
as  a  last  resource.  Nor  was  his  faith  belied  by  the  results. 
He  had  tried  that  other  salable  commodity,  loyalty ;  but 
there  was  quite  enough  of  it  to  be  had  for  the  asking,  and 
when  he  requested  a  subsidy  from  the  Minister  on  the 
ground  that  he  was  zealous  and  indefatigable  in  defending 
the  good  and  bad  measures  of  the  Government,  the  late 
Count  Tolstoy  significantly  dared  him  to  do  otherwise.  He 
then  returned  unabashed  to  his  native  city,  took  to  attending 
divine  service  every  morning,  taking  up  an  ostentatious 
•  position  before  two  rich  and  bigoted  merchants,  beating  the 
ground  with  his  forehead,  injuring  his  knees  with  genuflex- 
ions, watering  his  handkerchief  with  tears,  and  in  various 
(•her  ways  behaving  like  a  penitent  of  the  early  churches. 
He  published,  verbatim,  the  sermons  of  all  Church  digni- 
taries in  the  diocese  ;  bared  his  head  before  the  ecclesiastical 
buildings  ;  and  was  before  long  caressed  by  the  bishops,  and 
received  large  subsidies  from  the  merchants  who  had  wit- 
nessed his  devotions.  His  paper  is  now  flourishing  and  his 
financial  condition  highly  satisfactory.' 

1  This  paper  was  already  finished  when  another  striking  instance  of  the 
practical  uses  of  "  religion  "  in  Russia  under  the  present  emperor  was  an- 
noun'^ed  in  the  Russian  Government  Afessengcr — the  appointment  of  M. 
Tertius  Philipj^off  to  the  high  post  of  Controller-general,  in  spite  of  the 
strenuous  opposition  of  M.  Pobedonostseff,  the  other  great  light  of  the  Rus- 
sian Church.  For  M.  Philippoff  is  known  chiefly  as  a  theologian,  an  indom- 
itable champion  of  Russian  Oithodoxy,  and  as  such  was  appointed  to  the 
honorary  post  of  Guardian  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  in  Jerusalem.  Moli^re 
might  have  profitably  cultivated  the  acquaintance  of  this  gentleman  before 
he  wrote  Tartiiffe,  and  Dickens  would  have  been  delighted  to  know  him 
when  drawing  the  portrait  of  the  "  sleek,  smiling  surveyor  of  Salisbury." 


LYING.  19 

Another  gentleman,  with  whom  I  am  also  personally  ac- 
quainted, who  is  well  known  to  certain  special  circles  outside 
Russia,  had  to  abandon  his  religion  in  order  to  qualify  for  a 
position  which  his  education  and  peculiar  studies  admirably 
fitted  him  to  fill.  He  joined  the  Lutheran  Church  and 
received  the  post.  Soon  afterwards  he  became  a  Roman 
Catholic  in  order  to  qualify  for  another  situation,  which  he 
also  obtained,  holding  it  simultaneously  with  the  first  and 
unhesitatingly  avowing  his  sordid  motives.  He  had  not  yet, 
however,  discovered  the  truth  ;  he  was  only  drawing  near  to 
it  by  easy  stages.  He  at  last  embraced  the  doctnnes  of  the 
Orthodoxy  to  qualify  for  another  position  ;  and  here  his  re- 
ligious Odyssey  came  to  an  end  ;  for  out  of  the  Orthodox 
Russian  Church  as  out  of  the  Orthodox  Hell  there  is  no 
redemption.  No  man  or  woman  who  has  once  belonged  to 
it  can  ever  again  leave  it.  This  gentleman,  known  by  name 
probably  to  many  readers  of  this  book,  boasts  an  excellent 
education  and  considerable  special  acquirements,  which  it  is 
perhaps  superfluous  to  say  lie  outside  the  sphere  of  ethics ; 
and,  what  will  seem  strangest  of  all  to  an  Englishman,  he  is 
highly  respected.  It  would  be  interesting  to  learn  such  a 
man's  view  of  truth  ;  but  whether  he  deems  it  absolute  or 
relative,  he-  would  no  doubt  heartily  agree  with  Lessing  that 
it  is  far  more  profitable  to  pass  one's  life  in  seeking  for  it  and 
groping  after  it  than  to  discover  it  off-hand. 

Thus  religious  belief,  which  might  become  in  the  Empire 
of  the  North  what  it  has  occasionally  been  in  other  countries 
—  a  germ  of  true  progress,  an  vmfailing  source  of  inspira- 
tion, a  temporary  substitute  for  that  positive  knowled^ 
which  is  the  basis  of  all  true  morality  —  is  deliberately  trans- 
formed in  Russia  into  an  efficient  instrument  of  demoraliza- 
tion. Genuine  faith,  as  distinguished  from  blind  superstition, 
is  rare  ;  yet,  whenever  and  wherever  manifested,  it  is  ruth- 
lessly crushed  unless  it  assumes  the  form  of  belief  in  the 
talismanic  power  of  hollow  forms  and  unintelligible  cere- 
monies. The  dragonnades  in  which  Louis  XIV.  gave  vent 
to  his  Christian  zeal  are  occasionally  rehearsed  in  Russia 
with  variations  suited  to  the  country  and  the  time,  as  M. 
Makoff,  the  late  Minister  of  the  Interior,  could  testify.  But 
they  are  enacted  in  silence  and  in  grim  earnest.  The  outer 
world,  like  the  spectators  in  a  theatre,  rarely  learns  anything 
but  the  final  results,  set  forth  in  short,  dry  paragraphs,  or  in 
flowery  official  reports  suggestive  of  Bertrand  Barere's  mas- 
terpieces of  state  rhetoric.     "  So  and  so  many  Catholics  of 


20  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

the  United  Russian  Church  have  humbly  petitioned  the  Most 
Holy  Synod  to  receive  them  into  the  true  fold  of  the  Or- 
thodox Communion,  and  their  prayers  have  been  most 
graciously  accorded  "  ;  such  is  the  pithy  account  that  usually 
finds  its  way  into  the  newspapers  ;  but  thereby  always  hangs 
a  tale,  and  invariably  a  woeful  one,  strongly  suggestive  of  that 
appalling  story  of  unparalleled  barbarity  which  was  euphe- 
mistically wrapped  up  in  the  decent  historical  formula, 
"  Order  is  restored  in  Warsaw."  I  have  had  occasion  to  ob- 
serve somewhat  closely  the  machinery  employed  in  bringing 
about  these  conversions,  and  I  can  truly  say  that  the  details 
are  sickening.  If  conversion  to  the  Russian  Church  meant 
the  beginning  of  a  veritable  millennium,  even  for  such  a 
boon  the  price  exacted  would  seem  exorbitant.  A  whole 
parish  or  an  entire  village  retires  to  rest  Catholic,  and 
awakes  at  cock-crow  to  learn  that  it  has  denied  its  religious 
faith,  and  is  severely  punished  for  taking  the  well-beaten  road 
to  the  Catholic  church  instead  of  the  unfrequented  path  to 
the  Orthodox  chapel.  Agents  had  persuaded  the  peasants 
to  sign  a  paper  described  as  an  address  of  congratulation  to 
his  Majesty  or  some  member  of  the  Imperial  family,  but 
which  was  really  a  petition  asking  for  admittance  into  the 
"  true  fold."  At  other  times  a  Roman  priest  secretly 
secedes  to  the  Orthodox  Communion,  and  transfers  the 
allegiance  of  his  flock,  who  have  not  the  faintest  inkling  of 
his  intentions,  a  procedure  the  more  feasible  that  the  cere- 
monies and  liturgy  of  the  United  Catholic  Church  are  iden- 
tical with  those  of  the  Orthodox  Church  of  Russia.  When 
tfie  trick  is  discovered  there  is  no  remedy.  Many  of  the 
peasants  prove  refractory  and  are  deported  to  Siberia  or  to 
the  coast  of  the  White  Sea.  The  remainder  are  awed  but 
not  convinced,  and  gradually  take  to  a  life  of  hypocrisy, 
openly  worship  in  the  Orthodox  Church,  privately  receive  the 
Sacrament  in  Roman  Catholic  places  of  worship,  or  in  holes 
and  corners  visited  by  priests  of  that  communion  ;  marry 
secretly  according  to  their  old  customs,  and  consent  to  have 
their  wives  publicly  treated  as  concubines  and  their  children 
handicapped  as  bastards.^ 


1  Such  marriages  are  perfectly  valid  in  Russian  law,  though  of  course 
unlawful.  The  punishment  decreed  against  those  who  contract  them  is 
sufficiently  severe  to  outweigh  all  ordinary  considerations,  and  it  is  at  least 
intelligible  that  simple  peasants  should  expose  their  offspring  to  the  painful 
treatment  which  the  Russian  law  reserves  for  illegitimate  children  rather  than 
be  separated  from  them  for  ever  and  sent  into  life-long  exile. 


LYING.  21 

In  no  other  country  of  the  world  —  except  perhaps  in  the 
Paraguay  of  Dr.  Francia  —  are  the  functions  of  the  legis- 
lator so  entirely  merged  in  those  of  the  moralist.  Nowhere 
else  could  the  standard  of  right  living  be  so  rapidly  and  so 
considerably  raised,  or  the  whole  social  state  so  readily 
remoulded  by  the  law-maker  as  in  Russia ;  and  yet  in  no 
other  country  is  he  so  reluctant  to  make  any  better  use  of 
the  sublime  office  which  he  exercises  than  that  of  prosti- 
tuting it  to  the  most  ignoble  ends.  The  result  of  this  gross 
neglect  of  duty  upon  the  masses  is  not  a  mere  matter  of 
opinion ;  it  is  writ  large  and  legible  in  the  history  of  the 
country,  in  the  character  of  the  people,  whose  thoughtless, 
shiftless,  trusting  nature  has  been  rendered  utterly  unfit  for 
an  encounter  with  a  strong  blast  of  bitter  experience  ;  their 
morale  being  as  morbid  and  unequipped  for  the  trials, 
temptations,  and  ordinary  duties  of  every-day  life  as  their 
over-sensitive  bodies — made  delicate  and  effeminate  by  the 
artificial  heat  of  rooms  —  are  for  the  fresh  breezes  of  spring. 
A  Russian  has  no  latent  power  of  reaction  stored  up  within 
him  to  enable  him  to  recover  from  the  moral  shocks  ami 
blows  which  await  him  at  every  step  in  life  ;  and  so  crude 
and  undeveloped  is  his  sense  of  the  relation  of  things  to  one 
another  that  it  seems  to  have  been  given  him  for  some  other 
world  than  ours.  His  lying  and  all  the  other  immoral 
habits  of  which  it  is  the  taproot,  are  unaccompanied  by  even 
the  most  rudimentary  consciousness  of  guilt ;  for  he  suffers 
from  complete  anaesthesia  of  that  moral  faculty  by  which 
in  other  people  these  habits  are  prevented  or  condemned. 
The  following  incident  may  help  to  illustrate  my  meaning 
and  to  throw  a  side-light  on  the  peasant's  views  on  the 
relations  of  things  to  each  other,  and  his  idea  of  veracity. 
In  the  Government  of  Kieff  some  time  ago  the  inhabitants 
of  thirty-six  villages,  after  due  deliberation,  decided  that 
no  public-houses  for  the  sale  of  alcoholic  drinks  should  be 
opened  in  any  of  the  villages  whose  representatives  took 
part  in  the  deliberation.  All  peasants  who  were  of  age 
voted  for  the  measure,  and  each  village  feed  a  public  writer, 
to  draw  up  a  petition  to  the  Government  asking  that  the 
decision  be  registered  and  sanctioned.  Thirty-five  petitions 
were  rejected  by  the  Ministry,  and  the  kabaks  duly  opened 
in  the  villages,  the  thirty-sixth  was  favorably  received,  and 
the  publicans  excluded.  The  reason  assigned  for  the  suc- 
cess of  the  thirty-sixth  petition  was  the  eloquence  and  force 
with  which  the  public  writer  put  the  case  ;  and  on  learning 


22  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

this,  the  inhabitants  of  the  fortunate  village,  disappointed 
that  their  kabaks  were  closed,  though  at  their  own  request, 
condemned  the  writer  of  the  petition  for  excess  of  zeal  and 
superfluous  eloquence  to  be  flogged.  And  he  was  duly 
flogged.^ 

It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  the  acts  of  the  authorities  have 
not  at  all  times  that  tendency  to  demoralize  which  is  their 
usual  characteristic ;  they  are  occasionally  even  salutary, 
and  one  would  be  glad  to  give  the  government  credit  for 
those  motives  which  are  at  once  the  most  obvious  and  most 
honorable,  were  it  not  that  the  real  reasons,  which  no  efl'ort 
is  made  to  conceal,  are  wholly  foreign  to  considerations  of 
morality.  Russian  newspapers,  with  a  few  exceptions,  seem 
to  make  a  specialty  of  lying,  and  apparently  thrive  upon  it. 
Of  course  the  inventive  or  mythopseic  faculty  of  the  press- 
men is  almost  exclusively  employed  upon  the  affairs  of 
foreign  countries  :  for,  like  Hovstad,  of  the  People'' s  Messen- 
ger, they  "  have  learned  from  experience  and  thoughtful 
men  that  in  purely  local  matters  a  paper  must  observe  a 
certain  amount  of  caution."  An  unsuspecting  foreigner  is 
thus  sometimes  puzzled  to  discover  how  a  provincial  news- 
paper with  fifteen  hundred  or  only  a  thousand  readers  can 
keep  special  correspondents  in  all  the  large  cities  of  the 
world,  and  pay  for  whole  columns  of  costly  telegrams.  The 
secret  was  ofiicially  disclosed  a  few  weeks  since,  when  the 
Government  ordered  all  the  editors  of  the  city  of  Odessa 
to  cease  publishing  foreign  telegrams  "  from  our  own  corre- 
spondents," without  first  proving  to  the  satisfaction  of  the 
local  censors  that  they  were  bond  fide  telegrams  and  not 
paragraphs  fabricated  at  the  ofiice.  The  result  was  imme- 
diate and  striking :  silence  fell  upon  the  special  correspond- 
ents —  as  deathlike  and  prolonged  as  that  with  which  the 
Delphic  oracle  was  struck  after  the  birth  of  Christ.  One's 
satisfaction  at  this  laudable  intervention  of  the  government 
is  considerably  diminished  by  the  circumstance  that  it  was 
determined  upon  on  purely  political  grounds,  several  forged 
"  foreign "  telegrams  being  gross  calumnies  upon  foreign 
governments,  whose  representatives  were  instructed  to  pro- 
test. 

Wholesale  lying  of  this  kind  would  presumably  cause  a 
bloody  revolution  in  this  enlightened  country,  judging  by  the 
terrible  shock  which  public  opinion  sustained  here  some  time 

1  Kievsloic  Slovo,  July  i6,  1887,  and  Odessa  Messeiiger,  July  18,  1887. 


LYING.  23 

ago  on  learning  that  Mr.  Parnell  endeavored  by  an  exaggera- 
tion in  terms  to  deliberately  mislead  the  House  of  Com- 
mons. What  would  be  said,  or  rather  done,  by  such  virtuous 
public  opinion,  were  the  elaborate  defence  of  lying  lately 
published  in  all  seriousness  by  the  editor  of  an  official 
journal,  to  have  appeared  in  London  instead  of  St.  Peters- 
burg? In  a  leading  article  upon  the  death  of  the  late  Crown 
Prince  of  Austria,  written  before  the  melancholy  circum- 
stances of  his  death  were  fully  known,  the  Graschdanin  bit- 
terly lamented  the  decay  of  lying  in  a  strain  worthy  of  a 
Jeremiah  bewailing  his  country's  fate.  "  If  he  really  put  an 
end  to  his  life,"  says  this  moralist,  whom  the  Government 
subsidizes  to  spread  the  light,  "  is  it  possible  that  there  was 
not  a  single  individual  sufficiently  alive  to  the  interests  of  the 
family,  the  dynasty,  and  the  throne, 'to  insist  upon  the  con- 
cealment of  the  fact  of  suicide,  and  to  hush  up  the  details  of 
it,  leaving  no  trace  discoverable?  What  would  be  easier  than 
to  conceal  the  suicide,  if  it  really  took  place?  'He  was 
toying  with  a  revolver,'  one  might  say,  '  when  it  caught  the 
button  of  his  uniform,'  or  a  number  of  other  very  natural  and 
likely  statements  might  have  been  put  forward,  and  there  is 
no  doubt  that  people  would  have  believed  them  much  more 
readily  than  the  story  of  suicide."  ^  On  the  other  hand,  that 
same  journal  and  others  of  its  way  of  thinking,  or  rather 
writing,  are  at  a  loss  for  words  emphatic  enough  to  ade- 
quately express  their  indignation  whenever  this  convenient 
principle  is  acted  upon  by  others  in  a  manner  injurious  or 
displeasing  to  themselves.  Thus  in  the  Novoye  Vremya,  the 
Russian  telegraphic  agency  is  plumply  accused  of  systemati- 
cally communicating  to  the  inhabitants  of  Omsk  false  state- 
ments concerning  the  prices  of  the  shares  of  various  banks, 
now  immoderately  exaggerating,  now  lowering  their  real 
value  on  the  exchange.  Thus,  on  the  iSth  of  September 
last  year,  the  shares  of  the  Volga- Kam  Bank  were  quoted  by 
that  news  agency  at  500  roubles,  whereas  in  reality  they  stood 
at  645  roubles,  a  difference  of  about  ^15  sterling  per  share  ; 
the  shares  of  the  Siberian  I'ank  were  given  at  645  roubles, 
whereas  they  were  only  460  roubles,  that  is,  about  ^19  dif- 
ference on  each  share.  "  Such  garbled  figures,"  exclaims 
the  writer,  "  are  systematically  }-epeated  every  day.  Fancy 
the  predicament  of  those  who  purchase  shares  of  the  above- 
named   companies   on   the  basis  of  the   telegrams  of  this 

1  Graschdanin,  February,  1889.     Cf.  also  Novosti,  19th  February,  1889. 


24  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

agency  !  "  ^  These  things,  it  should  be  borne  in  mind,  are 
confined  to  no  one  portion  of  Russia,  to  no  particular 
class  or  classes  of  the  population  ;  they  are  universal,  pan- 
Russian,  inborn  in  every  individual  like  a  species  of  original 
sin  inherited  from  forgotten  ancestors  and  deliberately  per- 
petuated by  present  sponsors.  If  moral  blame  attaches  to 
any  one,  it  can  only  be  to  the  Government  and  the  Church 
in  the  past  and  to  the  press  of  very  recent  years.  The 
masses  are  wholly  blameless.  To  them  lying  has  ever  been 
as  natural  as  singing.  It  is  as  old  and  as  respectable 
as  the  universe.  "  Lying  began  with  the  world,"  says  one 
of  their  proverbs,  "  and  with  the  world  it  will  die."  What 
force  of  expression,  lucidity,  eloquence,  is  to  our  speech, 
lying  is  to  theirs.  "  Rye  beautifies  the  field,"  says  another 
Russian  proverb,  "  and  ^  lie  beautifies  speech."  And  again, 
"  A  palatable  lie  is  better  than  a  bitter  truth."  But  even  had 
mendacity  been  foreign  to  their  nature,  the  practical  expe- 
rience of  a  generation  or  two  of  veracious  men  acquired 
under  the  Government  and  in  the  Church  of  any  of  the  past 
nine  centuries  of  Russian  history  would  have  amply  sufficed 
to  teach  this  docile  people  that  unblushing  falsehood  is  the 
only  coin  that  passes  current  in  their  native  country.  The 
accuracy  of  this  statement  is  vouched  for  by  history ;  it  is 
confirmed  by  the  evidence  of  the  people  themselves  em- 
bodied in  their  countless  proverbs,  which  constitute  nearly 
three-fourths  of  the  spoken  language  of  the  uneducated. 
"  Do  not  mourn  for  truth  :  make  terms  with  falsehood."  Or, 
"  It  is  by  falsehood  that  men  live  :  it  is  not  meet  that  we 
should  die."  Not  only  have  they  everything  to  gain  by 
deceiving  and  cheating  their  fellow-men  and  those  unprinci- 
pled slavemasters  whom  they  looked  upon  as  maleficent 
deities,  but  they  have  no  penalty  to  undergo  in  the  shape  of 
remorse  here  or  hell  fire  hereafter.  If  detection  is  not  fol- 
lowed by  physical  punishment,  there  is  no  cause  for  appre- 
hension. ''  Lying,"  according  to  another  proverb,  "  is  not 
like  chewing  dough  :  it  won't  choke  you."  It  is  not  that 
they  do  not  honor  and  revere  truth  for  itself,  whenever  they 
hear  of  it ;  but  they  look  upon  ft  as  a  sort  of  Noumenon  far 


1  Novoye  Vremya,  6th  November,  i888.  This  is  one  of  numerous  such 
accusations  against  the  same  agency.  It  is  not  my  wish  or  purpose  to  dis- 
cuss the  truth  or  falsehood  of  these  accusations  of  deliberate  lying.  They 
may  be  cases  of  inadvertent  errors.  A  Russian  proverb  truly  says,  "  We 
cannot  creep  into  another's  soul"  to  learn  his  intentions.  Cf.,  however, 
Crasclidanin,  Sth  August,  1889,  and  Novoye  Vremya,  3d  August,  1889. 


LYING.  25 

too  precious  for  this  sinful  phenomenal  world  of  ours  — 
a  holiday  garment  for  the  soul  to  be  worn  in  the  Elysian 
fields  prepared  for  them  by  an  indulgent  Creator  after  they 
have  thoroughly  cleansed  themselves  in  the  bath  of  death. 
"Truth  is  sacred,"  says  a  Russian  proverb,  "  but  we  mortals 
are  sinful."  Or  in  a  variant  which  is  also  explanatory, 
"  Sacred  truth  is  good,  but  not  for  mortals."  W' hat  it  is 
good  for  is  made  clear  in  another  proverb,  "  Truth  is  not 
good  for  being  put  in  action  :  it  should  be  put  in  an  icon-glass 
case  and  prayed  to." 

One  of  the  disadvantages  inseparable  from  an  attem]:)t 
to  prove  a  comprehensive  thesis  by  a  series  of  particular 
instances  is  the  danger  of  the  conclusion  being  held  to  be 
a  wholly  unwarranted  or  a  greatly  exaggerated  generaliza- 
tion. As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  has  been  my  earnest  endeavor 
to  state  the  case  as  moderately  as  is  compatible  with  a  due 
regard  for  incontrovertible  facts ;  and  English  travellers 
in  Russia  who  may  still  feel  inclined  to  make  exceptions 
from  the  general  rule  in  favor  of  such  apparently  trustworthy 
sources  of  information  as  government  institutions,  ministries, 
statistical  bureaus,  and  the  like,  would  do  well  to  act  only 
on  good  cause  shown,  taking  with  them  the  prudence  of 
the  serpent  and  leaving  at  the  frontier  the  simplicity  of 
doves.  A  few  months  ago  a  case  illustrative  of  the  necessity 
for  this  precaution  was  published  in  the  Russian  newspapers, 
not  as  a  matter  of  wonder,  but  merely  as  an  ordinary  stop- 
gap to  fill  in  the  fragment  of  a  column.  The  occasion  was 
the  reading  before  the  Governor  of  Baku  of  the  official 
report  of  the  Statistical  Department  of  Baku  on  crime  in 
that  district  during  the  year  1888.  It  was  then  solemnly 
affirmed,  with  all  the  aplomb  which  objective  science  and 
professional  assiduity  can  inspire,  that  there  were  but  three 
cases  of  highway  robbery  and  two  murders  during  twelve 
months  —  a  remarkably  clean  bill  of  moral  health  for  such 
a  district.  Now  the  subject  of  the  report  was  very  simple, 
one  would  imagine.  Apparently  no  one  would  ever  dream 
of  deliberate  lying  in  the  presence  of  the  governor  of  the 
very  district  of  which  it  <  was  question,  surrounded  as  he 
was  by  officials  provided  with  excellent  means  of  testing 
every  statement.  And  least  of  all  would  one  suspect  a 
statistical  department  of  being  foolish  enough  to  attempt 
such  a  thing,  seeing  that  its  only  raison  d'etre  is  the  issue 
of  trustworthy  reports  calculated  to  inspire  confidence. 
What  actually  happened  is  this  :  the  governmental  attorney 


26  RUSSIAN   TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

(procurer),  who  was  attentively  listening  to  the  report,, 
(juietly  remarked  that  to  his  personal  knowledge,  which  may 
have  been  incomplete,  there  had  been  not  tens  but  hun- 
dreds of  murders  and  robberies  committed  in  that  district 
during  the  year  1888.'  The  statistics  of  education  are  rich 
in  equally  eloquent  illustrations  of  the  same  inborn  aversion 
of  the  Russian,  even  though  educated  and  trained  to  better 
things,  to 

"  let  truth's  lump  rot  stagnant  for  the  lack 
Of  a  timely  helpful  lie  to  leaven  it." 

Thus,  among  the  schools  which  figured  in  the  official  list 
of  educational  establishments  of  the  government  of  Kherson 
during  the  past  twelve  years,  it  has  now  been  disclosed  that 
tivo  hundred  and  seventeen  (217)  are  mere  figments  of  the 
brain  of  some  unduly  zealous  official,  they  never  having 
had  an  objective  exi'stence.^  How  many  such  paper  schools 
there  are  in  other  governments  of  Russia,  no  man  knows.^ 
Certain  persons  with  broad  views  on  the  doctrine  of  com- 
promise and  accommodating  readiness  to  subordinate  ethics 
to  the  practical  exigencies  of  daily  life  may  perhaps  be 
tempted  to  explain  all  these  symptoms  as  merely  the  result 
of  a  passing  moral  aberration  such  as  we  observe  in  one 
form  or  another  in  most  nations  and  epochs,  rather  than  as 
indications  of  a  specific  difference  of  moral  code.  To  these 
large-minded  moralists  a  convincing  reply  within  the  limits 
of  a  review  article  would  be  impossible.  I  would  ask  them, 
however,  to  give  careful  attention  to  the  following  fact  and 
to  draw  a  mental  picture  of  the  state  of  society  in  which 
alone  such  a  state  of  things  is  possible.  A  well-known  jour- 
nalist of  Odessa  (Dulsky  by  name),  who  himself  some  time 
since  occupied  an  editor's  arm-chair  in  the  office  of  the 
Odessky  Listok,  published  a  very  curious  letter  some  months 
ago  in  which  he  laughs  to  scorn  the  editor  of  another  journal 
{The  New  Russian  Telegraph)  whom  he  had  been  deliberately 
and  systematically  deceiving  for  several  years.  "  As  I  had 
complete  control  of  the  depot  for  intelligence  of  all  kinds," 
this  high  priest  of  modern  journalism  frankly  writes,  "  in  the 


1  Graschdanin,  April  i6,  1889. 

2  Novoye  Vreniya,  August  31,  1888. 

3  These  and  a  hundred  similar  instances  should  be  carefully  borne  in 
mind  by  travellers  like  Mr.  Landsdell  and  others  whose  faith  in  Russian 
official  statements  is  Tertullian-like  in  its  ravenous  appetite  for  the  wildest 
and  most  indigestible  assertions. 


LYING.  27 

government  of  Bessarabia,  most  of  the  items  of  news  pub- 
lished in  the  Nnu  Tele^^raph  were  forged  in  my  lodgings  and 
at  ?ny  dictation^  Yet  this  gentleman  is  still  an  active  mem- 
ber of  the  staff  of  the  most  widely  circulated  daily  news- 
paper in  all  South  Russia,  and  is  highly  respected  —  as  respect 
goes  in  those  parts  —  in  the  social  circles  in  which  he 
moves.  Nor  is  this  indulgent  treatment  the  result  of  repent- 
ance and  a  firm  resolve  to  amend  in  future  ;  for  not  only 
does  this  prophet  and  guide  publicly  avow  acts  which  in 
western  climes  would  be  branded  as  infamous  by  the  least 
Pharisaical  of  journalists,  but  he  positively  glories  in  them 
as  if  he  could  possess  no  better  titles  to  public  esteem. 
Nay,  he  does  not  hesitate  to  humbly  implore  the  assistance 
of  God  to  enable  him  to  lie  and  mislead  with  as  much  suc- 
cess in  the  future  as  in  the  past.  "  So  matters  have  gone 
on,"  he  writes,  "  for  the  space  of  four  or  five  years,  and  I 
shall  not  hide  from  you  that  with  God's  help  I  shall  continue 
this  harmless  occupation  until  I  grow  tired  of  it."  ^ 

1  Cf.  Northern  Messenger  (monthly  review),  February,  1889,  pp.  67,  68, 


28  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 


CHAPTER   11. 

FATALISM. 

Where  the  great  guiding  i)rinciples  of  social  conduct 
universally  accepted  by  civilized  peoples  are  not  yet  assimi- 
lated by  a  nation,  it  would  be  puerile  to  expect  the  observ- 
ance of  those  minor  practical  rules  which  are  usually 
included  under  the  name  of  propriety.  This  may  be  an 
enviable  blessing  or  the  opposite,  according  to  the  point  of 
view  from  which  we  consider  it,  but  in  either  case  it  is  an 
incontrovertible  fact.  In  no  other  civihzed  people  is  the 
sense  of  the  fitness  of  things  and  the  perception  of  the 
incongruous  so  undeveloped  and  rudimentary  as  in  the  Rus- 
sians. This  defect  can  be  satisfactorily  accounted  for  in 
many  ways ;  for  instance,  by  the  listless,  unreal,  dreamy  life 
led  by  the  people,  who  are  ever  glad  to  flee  from  the  dread 
realities  around  them,  to  sleep,  drunkenness,  phantasy,  for 
transient  relief;  by  their  childish  view  of  the  relation  of 
cause  and  effect,  which  to  their  thinking  is  as  necessary  or 
as  accidental  as  the  falling  of  rain  in  answer  to  the  prayers 
of  the  priest  for  moisture  for  the  crops.  Thus  a  most 
trivial  act  —  such  as  spitting  over  one's  shoulder,  for  in- 
stance —  performed  by  a  nobody  will  work  revolutions  in 
the  heavenly  spheres,  producing  effects  that  are  nothing  if 
not  infinite.  The  stroke  of  a  pen  of  a  country  boor,  who  is 
a  copyist  in  some  government  office,  will  thwart  the  will  of 
the  Tsar  and  baffle  the  efforts  of  the  entire  Government  ;^  a 
few  genuflexions  in  church  and  the  burning  of  a  penny  wax 
taper  before  an  icon  will  straightway  restore  to  pristine  in- 
nocence the  abandoned  wretch  whose  soul  is  black  with  the 
guilt  of  inexpiable  crimes,  to  which  Tannhiiuser's  were 
mere    peccadilloes.     To   the   average  Russian  mind    every 

1  This  is  literally  true.  I  could  bring  forward  several  curious  cases  in 
proof  of  this  statement,  which  is  well  known  to  business  men  in  the  country 
—  natives  and  foreigners,  who  have  always  to  begin  the  distribution  of  the 
indispensable  bribes  with  the  lowest  officials,  ascending  gradually  upwards. 
The  omission  of  a  single  intermediate  link  would  be  as  fatal  to  final  success 
as  the  passing  over  oY  a  proposition  in  Euclid  to  the  boy  who  learns 
geometry  for  the  first  time. 


FATALISM.  29 

cause  is  a  talisman  between  which  and  the  effect  to  be 
produced  there  need  be  no  proportion  whatever.  The 
scholastic  law  —  Nemo  dat  quod  non  habet  —  would  be 
rank  lieresy  to  the  mind  of  the  Russian,  who  has  no  eye  for 
the  perception  of  the  grotesqueness  that  so  often  results 
from  the  logical  application  of  his  own  view  of  causality. 
The  talisman  once  put  in  requisition,  the  necessary  effect 
must  follow ;  if  it  does  not,  the  reason  thereof  surpasses  the 
understanding  of  the  poor  helpless  mortal  who  had  best 
leave  things  to  right  themselves.  At  the  root  of  this  slip- 
shod way  of  conducting  the  most  serious  business  of  life  is 
the  absence  of  reflection,  which  during  ages  of  demoraliza- 
tion, when  all  the  expanding  intellectual  energies  of  the 
people  were  systematically  driven  into  the  narrow  channel 
of  emotion,  was  paralyzed  for  want  of  exercise,  like  the 
ventral  fins  of  the  mudfish  {Siluridce,  etc.),  or  the  eyes  of 
the  sightless  aniblyopsis  of  the  Mammoth  Cave  of  Ken- 
tucky. A  man  is  appointed  to  a  post  which  requires  con- 
stant hard  work,  he  shirks  the  hard  work  and  accepts  the 
emoluments  in  conformity  with  a  confused  half-conscious 
feeling  that  the  nomination  and  his  occupying  the  post 
constitute  as  it  were  the  talismanic  formula ;  the  results  in- 
tended should  somehow  come  of  themselves,  or  at  any  rate 
with  very  litde  co-operation  from  him.  A  typical  instance 
of  this  view  of  one's  life-work  occurred  in  the  beginning  of 
the  present  year.  The  secretary  of  the  Town  Council  o^ 
the  city  of  Taraschtscha  (Government  of  Kieff)  for  a  long 
time  discharged  his  professional  duties  in  accordance  with 
this  curious  conception  of  his  obligations,  until  at  last  it 
occurred  to  certain  town  councillors  that  they  might  get  on 
fairly  well  without  him.  They  drew  up  a  report  to  this 
effect,  which  had  first  to  be  privately  read  and  signed  by 
him,  and  then  publicly  read  by  him  to  the  Town  Council. 
He  actually  signed  the  report,  having  shirked  his  duty  of 
first  perusing  it,  and  afterwards  publicly  read  about  half  of 
it  to  the  Town  Council  before  he  became  aware  of  its  tlrift.' 
This  same  conception  of  duty  was  manifested  some  time 
ago  in  a  somewhat  emphatic  manner  by  a  favorite  pianist 
whose  concerts  are  eagerly  visited  by  friends  of  music  in 
Russia.  This  gentleman  sometimes  deems  that  he  has 
satisfiictorily  performed  his  duty  if  he  merely  shows  himself 
to  the  public  assembled  to  hear  him  playing.     In  the  spring 

'^Novoye  Vremya,  i8th  February,  1889. 


30  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

of  1888,  he  was  advertised  to  give  a  concert  in  the  Univer- 
sity of  Dorpat.  The  seats  were  filled  by  an  appreciative 
audience,  which  grew  impatient  when  the  artist  failed  to  put 
in  an  appearance  at  the  hour  fixed.  At  last  he  arrived, 
staggered  along  the  platform,  turning  his  dull  unmeaning 
eyes  upon  the  audience,  and  fell  heavily  into  the  seat 
beside  the  piano.  Then  he  laid  his  bushy  head  upon  the 
candle-stand,  and  let  his  hands  drop  motionless  to  his  side. 
The  public  grew  nervous ;  several  ladies  cried  out  that  he 
had  a  stroke  of  apoplexy,  and  were  imploring  medical 
assistance  for  him  when  he  fell  heavily  to  the  ground. 
"  He  is  dead,"  they  cried  despairingly,  and  the  confusion 
became  indescribable,  until  a  friend  of  the  artist  came 
forward  and  said :  "  It  is  nothing  dangerous ;  our  dear 
artist  is  only  dead  drunk."  ^  And  the  "  dear  artist "  is  as 
great  a  favorite  as  ever.  Improprieties  of  this  kind  are 
constantly  passing  without  notice  in  Russia,  where  the 
manners  of  the  rudest  elements  of  society  —  the  not  yet 
amalgamated  Armenians,  Georgians,  Mingrelians,  etc. — 
have  an  irresistible  tendency  to  keep  the  general  standard 
rather  low.  Turghenieff  was  one  day  complaining  to  his 
friend  Pana'ieff  of  the  queer  (to  an  Englishman's  way  of 
thinking  outrageous)  manner  in  which  the  well-known 
litterateur,  Pissemsky,  had  conducted  himself  the  evening 
before,  when  reading  a  new  novel  he  had  written  to  a  circle 
of  well-born  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  a  salon  of  St.  Peters- 
burg. "  I  shall  take  care  never  to  be  present  again  when 
Pissemsky  is  reading,  unless  it  be  in  our  own  circle,"  ex- 
claimed Turghenieff.  "Just  fancy,  gentlemen,  he  under- 
took to  read  his  novel  though  suffering  from  a  disorder  of 
the  bowels.  As  usual,  he  incessantly  belched,  constantly 
jumped  up  and  went  t)ut  of  the  room,  and  returning  ad- 
justed his  dress  before  the  ladies.  Lastly,  and  to  c7-own 
all^  he  called  for  a  glass  of  vodka."  ^ 

Is  there  any  country  but  Russia  in  which  the  accomplished 
horseman  of  a  circus  could  arrange  to  have  a  concert  given 
for  his  benefit  —  in  the  Christian  church,  as  Schuman  Cook 
did  in  1888?*     Is  there   any  other  country  in  Europe  in 


^  Novosti,  k.x>u\,  1888. 

2  The  italics  are  my  own  and  are  meant  to  emphasize  TurgheniefFs  idea 
of  the  highest  term  of  the  climax,  the  tie  plus  ultra  of  impropriety. 

3  Historical  Messenger,  Apri^,  1889. 

■•  Cf.  the  Journal  Bah,  August,  1888  ;  the  Riga  Messenger,  August  1888 ; 
and  the  Odessa  News,  August  28,  1888,  etc. 


FATALISM.  31 

which  a  Minister  of  State,  arrayed  in  all  the  gold  lace  and 
decorations  of  his  office,  taking  part  in  the  most  solemn  and 
impressive  ceremony  imaginable,  the  obsequies  of  his  mur- 
dered sovereign,  and  bearing  the  sceptre  or  some  such  other 
symbol  of  imperial  power,  the  cynosure  of  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  eyes,  quietly  put  the  sceptre  in  one  hand  and 
with  the  other  pulled  out  from  his  pocket  a  substantial 
sandwich  which  he  had  thoughtfully  provided,  and  leisurely 
munched  it  while  walking  in  the  procession  as  naturally  as  if 
he  were  in  the  clearing  of  a  wood  on  a  picnic  with  friends.' 
It  would  be  a  mistake  to  treat  these  things  as  isolated  facts 
of  rare  occurrence  —  the  result  of  the  heedlessness  or  eccen- 
tricity of  obscure  individuals.  They  are  frequent,  one  may 
say  universal,  and  quite  as  characteristic  of  corporate  bodies 
and  assemblies  in  which  the  collective  wisdom  of  whole 
classes  of  the  population  is  supposed  to  reside.  Every  year 
the  city  of  Moscow  organizes  a  public  festival  in  aid  of  the 
Society  of  Christian  Help.  This  would  seem  a  good  enough 
work  on  the  face  of  it,  but  unfortunately  the  realization  was 
never  quite  in  keeping  with  the  conception,  for  the  festival 
always  consisted  of  drinking  to  excess,  listening  to  the  sing- 
ing of  indecent  songs  by  women  who  illustrated  them  by 
indecent  gestures,  and  other  equally  "  Christian  "  pleasures. 
Still  people  desirous  of  upholding  the  Society  of  Christian 
Help  went  and  generally  brought  their  families  with  them, 
and  went  home  satisfied,  having  killed  two  birds  with  one 
stone.  In  1888  an  additional  attraction  was  held  out  to 
the  people  in  the  shape  of  a  pantomime  for  boys  and  girls, 
in  which  was  reproduced  "  the  life  of  the  shady  women 
of  the  detni-nwnde  of  St.  Petersburg  and  the  manners  and 
morals  of  cooks  and  servant  women  of  the  capital,  when  or- 
ganizing orgies  at  night  with  their  lovers,  members  of  the 
fire  brigade."  -  One  father  of  a  family  protested  at  last,  and 
declared  that  this  was  not  the  kind  of  spectacle  that  he 
would  like  to  bring  his  children  to  —  the  intrinsic  incon- 
gruity of  the  thing  having  seemingly  completely  escaped  his 
observation.  The  Moscow  Listok,  however,  a  widely  read 
journal,  ridiculed  the  remarks  of  the  gentleman  in  question, 
observing  that  what  children  should  be  protected  from  is  not 

1  This  act,  however,  cost  the  gentleman  his  portfolio,  and  the  usual  sola- 
tium invariably  given  to  dismissed  Ministers.  I  refrain  from  mentioning 
his  name,  though  I  have  said  enough  to  load  to  its  identification  in  Russia. 
The  gentleman  is  otherwise  a  verv  worthy  man. 

2  Cf.  Novosti,  31st  October,  1888. 


32  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

demoralization,  but  puritanical  fathers ;  that  it  is  a  mistake 
to  entertain  ideal  conceptions  of  what  our  social  amusements 
should  be,  and  if  one  of  tlic  factors  of  this  amusement  should 
prove  to  be  the  delineation  of  light  morals,  etc.,  that  in  this 
there  would  be  no  ^reat  harm. 

This  helpless  inability  or  unconquerable  repugnance  to 
duly  shape  the  means  to  the  end  proposed,  this  deep  con- 
viction that,  the  first  step  taken,  everything  else  may  be 
safely  left  to  God  or  to  chance,  is  manifest  in  every  act  of 
individuals,  societies,  and  representatives  of  the  nation.  It 
strikes  us  with  quite  as  much  force  in  Siberia  as  in  Moscow, 
and  testifies  to  Russian  nationality  as  loudly  in  Archangelsk  as 
in  Kieff.  One  is  being  perpetually  reminded  of  the  two 
simple-minded  Russians  who  entered  into  conversation  with 
each  other  in  a  railway  carriage  half-way  between  St.  Peters- 
burg and  Moscow,  and  discovering  that  they  were  travelling 
in  the  same  train  though  bound  the  one  for  Moscow  and  the 
other  for  St.  Petersburg,  which  lie  in  very  opposite  directions, 
were  loud  in  their  admiration  of  the  wonders  of  science  and 
civilization,  but  whose  raptures  gave  place  to  very  sober  re- 
flections the  next  morning,  when  they  both  found  themselves 
in  Moscow,  one  of  them  being  several  hundred  miles  from 
his  destination.  This  typical  story  was  forcibly  recalled  to 
my  mind  in  1888,  when  reading  the  startling  disclosures 
published  by  two  respectable  doctors  concerning  the  Hospi- 
tal of  the  Russian  Sisters  of  Mercy  in  Odessa,  of  which  they 
were  the  consulting  physicians.^  "  Patients  are  received," 
we  are  told,  "  mainly  in  order  that  they  should  die.  They 
are  kept  in  narrow,  moist,  stinking  cells,  are  treated  in  the 
name  of  mercy  with  a  degree  of  cruelty  that  outstrips  the 
limits  of  the  probable  ;  they  are  fed  with  loathsome  food,  are 
made  to  wait  eight  hours  for  their  medicines,  which  are  pre- 
pared in  the  kitchen  along  with  the  meals,  being  for  economy's 
sake  compounded  with  water  instead  of  spirits,  and  put  up 
in  match-boxes  and  cigarette-boxes  ;  paralytics  are  purged 
with  enemas,  and  sufferers  from  typhus  put  in  straight-waist- 
coats. Since  the  arrival  of  the  new  Superioress  from  St. 
Petersburg  a  new  method  of  treatment  has  been  superadded, 
and  now  patients  are  healed  by  charms,  spells,  and  magical 
formulas."  -  There  were  two  exhibitions  in  St.  Petersburg 
during  the  first  half  Df  the  year  1SS9,  both  of  which  were 
adaptations  to  a  different  order  of  things  of  the  journey  to  St. 

1  Cf.  Novosti,  31st  October,  1888.  2  ibid.^  12th  November,  1888. 


FATALISM.  33 

Petersburg  in  a  train  bound  for  Moscow  ;  tbe  one  a  Pan- 
Russian  exhibition  of  the  products  of  pisciculture,  with  speci- 
mens of  fish  from  the  far  north,  the  extreme  south,  the 
Volga,  the  Vistula,  and  the  Caspian ;  and  the  other  a  flower 
show  with  naiad-lik6  lilies,  royal  roses,  and  rare  exotics. 
Large  numbers  of  the  fish  in  the  first  exhibition  were  in  such 
a  very  advanced  state  of  putrescence  that  they  were  sold  for 
nominal  prices /(^r/('('(/ to  the  visitors,  who  had  to  hold  their 
noses  and  shorten  their  stay.  The  persons  responsible,  when 
appealed  to,  had  the  fish  removed,  but  not  before  they  had 
pointed  out  that  all  the  aspects  of  the  fish  industry  in  the 
Empire  should  be  in  evidence  at  a  good  representative 
exhibition,  and  that  as  the  sale  of  putrid  fish  as  an  article  of 
food  was  a  common  feature  in  the  trade  it  should  also  figure 
there. ^  The  finest  exhibit  at  the  flower  show,  a  magnificent 
specimen  of  the  Cape  Colony  SircUtza  with  gorgeous  yellow- 
blue  flowers,  sent  by  the  Imperial  Botanical  Gardens,  was 
found  to  be  a  mere  sham,  a  rootless  flower  with  short  stalk, 
temporarily  stuck  into  the  earth  to  deceive  simple-minded 
visitors  to  the  exhibition.  How  many  other  exhibits,  from 
private  as  well  as  from  Imperial  institutions,  were  equally 
clever  frauds  the  public  had  no  means  of  judging."' 

Conscious  that  these  statements  are  the  logical  deductions 
from  facts  numerous  enough  to  fill  bulky  volumes,  I  am 
also  aware  that  patriotic  Russians  with  a  strongly-developed 
sentiment  of  national  amour  propre  may  deem,  or  at  least 
declare  them,  exaggerated  or  too  strongly  colored.  The 
possibility  of  such  a  line  of  argument,  rather  than  any  real 
need  of  further  confirmation,  is  my  excuse  for  quoting  the 
opinion  of  a  Russian  litterateur,  now  living  and  writing  on 
the  staff  of  the  Petersburg  journal  Novosti,  who  published 
an  article  in  that  paper  in  October,  1887,  on  the  question 
"Are  Russians  Civilized?"  and  I  am  bound  to  say  that  the 
views  which  he  there  put  forward  were  received  with  appro- 
bation by  the  greater  part  of  the  provincial  press,  which 
reproduced  the  article  in  extenso  or  in  part. 

"To  begin  with,"  writes  M.  Skabitscheffsky,  "the  most 
civilized  of  us  all  lead  tlouble  lives  :  one  life  for  our  guests, 
when  we  flaunt  our  culture,  and  a  totally  different  one  in 
private,  for  daily  use  at  home,  where  you  can  never  say 
what  enormities  your  most«  civilized  man  may  not  be  com- 
mitting.    He  may  be   blowing   his    nose   with  his  fingers, 

1  Cf.  Novosti,  13th  May,  1889.     .  2  Ibid, 


34  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

licking  the  frying-pan  with  his  tongue,  drinking  out  of  the 
bottle  or  milk-jug,  etc.,  etc.  It  is  not  without  cause  that 
our  pro\'erb  says  :  '  If  you  do  not  wish  to  spoil  your  appe- 
tite don't  look  into  the  kitchen.'  Now  what  manner  of 
civilization  is  that  which  exists  only  to  be  paraded  before 
the  guests  like  a  gala  uniform  which  is  taken  off  after  having 
been  worn  for  an  hour?  Why,  it  is  the  fullest  negation  of 
the  very  conception  expressed  by  the  word  —  the  concep- 
tion of  a  series  of  customs  and  habits  that  have  grown  into 
second  nature.  In  the  most  civilized  classes  of  society  you 
observe  the  complete  absence  of  respect  for  public  or  pri- 
vate property.  It  needs  all  the  watchful  vigilance  of  the 
police  to  keep  public  gardens  from  being  befouled,  the  trees 
therein  from  being  torn  up,  the  monuments  from  being 
broken  and  covered  with  ribald  inscriptions.  If  you  let 
your  country  house  for  the  summer  to  people  who  are  to  all 
seeming  thoroughly  enlightened,  with  an  easy  conscience  they 
allow  their  horses  and  kine  to  graze  in  your  garden  and  to 
eat  up  the  flowers  in  your  flower-beds.  I  once  called  upon 
acquaintances  of  mine,  who  were  also  most  civilized  people  ; 
all  the  stoves  in  their  lodgings  were  heated  until  they  were 
well-nigh  white  hot,  and  fuel  was  still  being  added.  The 
heat  in  the  rooms  was  unbearable.  '  Why  do  you  heat  your 
rooms  so  immoderately?'  I  asked.  MV'ell,  how  can  you 
ask  such  a  question?  '  was  the  reply  ;  '  vvhy,  the  wood,  don't 
you  know,  is  the  house-owner's  -^  surely  you  would  not  have 
us  spare  it  ! '  And  it  is  remarkable  that  in  all  classes  of 
society  you  see  the  same  sottish,  brutish  conviction  preva- 
lent, that  not  only  need  we  not  save  and  spare  what  does  not 
belong  to  ourselves,  but  that  we  are  in  a  manner  bound  at 
all  costs  to  annihilate  it.  It  is  in  obedience  to  this  instinct 
that  we  cover  the  tables  of  our  lodgings  with  inscriptions 
and  pour  every  imaginable  filth  upon  them ;  that,  removing 
from  our  rooms,  we  consider  it  our  duty  to  tear  off  the  wall- 
paper and  if  possible  to  damage  the  walls  also.  To  reduce 
to  rags  the  book  we  have  taken  from  the  library,  to  deface 
the  margins  with  sottish  remarks  and  to  tear  out  the  pictures 
—  this  also  is,  in  due  season,  our  sacred  duty.  .  ,  .  And 
after  all  this,  we  have  the  audacity  to  talk  of  Russian  civil- 
ization, of  the  cultured  class  !  " 
% 

1  Lodgings  (flats  of  several  rooms,  containing  kitchen,  etc.)  are  fre- 
quently let  in  Russia  with  fuel ;  the  house-owner  stipulating  to  supply  all 
the  wood  required  by  the  tenant  to  heat  the  rooms  and  for  culinary  pur^:. 
poses. 


FATALISM.  35 

The  lowest  substratum  of  the  Russian  character  which 
the  most  careful  analysis  can  discover  is  irreverence.  How- 
ever serious  the  thoughts  by  which  a  Russian's  mind  may  at  a 
given  moment  be  absorbed,  however  enthusiastic  his  devo- 
tion to  a  truly  noble  cause,  he  is  always  careful  to  leave  a 
chink  of  his  mind  open  for  future  irreverence,  to  bubble  up 
through  and  swamp  the  relics  of  that  faith  for  which  he  is 
now  perhaps  ready  to  sacrifice  his  life.  In  the  height  of 
his  noble  enthusiasm,  like  David  Copperfield,  when  sorrow 
for  his  dead  mother  was  most  poignant,  he  carefully  notes 
the  most  trivial  incidents  going  on  around  him,  and  will 
treasure  them  up  in  his  memory  on  the  chance  of  their 
yielding  him  the  materials  for  a  future  sarcasm  against  his 
present  ideals.  Oliin  7neminisse  juvabit.  Hence  the  amaz- 
ing suddenness  with  which  a  Russian  changes  his  point 
of  view,  and  veers  round  from  north  to  south  without  a 
moment's  stay  at  any  of  the  intermediate  points  of  the  com- 
pass, and  the  picture  of  Dostoi'effsky,  the  great  psychological 
novelist,  solemnly  offering  up  his  heartfelt  gratitude  to  the 
Emperor  of  Russia  for  having  banished  him  to  Siberia,  to 
herd  with  the  scum  of  creation  and  suffer  maddening  misery 
for  acts  which,  if  not  indifferent,  were  positively  praise- 
worthy, cannot  be  matched  in  Christendom,  outside  the 
walls  of  a  lunatic  asylum. 

Deep-rooted  faith  in  destiny,  which  is  another  funda- 
mental trait  of  the  Russian  character,  and  is  the  only  real 
faith  that  permeates  the  people,  contributes  largely  no  doubt 
to  that  peculiar  frame  of  mind  in  which  such  fickleness  is 
possible,  such  laxity  of  morals  an  inevitable  necessity. 
"What  is  to  be,  cannot  be  avoided,"  is  a  proverb  and  a 
dogma  of  every  subject  of  the  Czar,  who  on  seeing  a 
murderer  or  his  victim  is  always  devoutly  thankful  to 
destiny  that  he  chances  for  the  time  being  to  be  neither ; 
thus  implying  that  one  role  is  just  as  likely  to  fall  to  his  lot 
as  the  other,  neither  being  avoidable  by  any  mere  effort  of 
his  will.  The  Russian  is  a  firm  believer  in  the  unlimited 
possibility  not  of  his  own  active  nature,  but  of  an  external 
power  whom  he  indiscriminately  names  God  and  Fate, 
which  is  always  actively  interfering  in  the  ups  and  downs  of 
his  unreal  life,  taking  away  all  incentive  to  action,  but  like- 
wise easing  him  of  all  moral  responsibility.  (Quaint  Sir 
Thomas  Browne  believed  that  the  "rubs,  doublings,  and 
wrenches,"  of  which  most  men's  lives  are  in  great  part  com- 
posed, and  which  "pass  awhile  under  the  effects  of  chance," 


36  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

need  only  to  be  well  examined  "  to  prove  the  mere  hand  of 
God."  And  the  good-hearted  old  doctor  felt  the  better  for 
this  conviction.  In  Russia,  without  any  study  or  analysis, 
people  find  God's  finger  in  every  accident,  crime,  and  in- 
trigue, having  sharpened  up  their  sight 

"  To  spy  a  providence  in  the  fire's  going  out, 
The  kettle's  boiling,  the  dime's  sticking  fast 
Despite  the  hole  i'  the  pocket." 

And  the  ensuing  familiarity  has  only  bred  contempt,  in 
addition  to  that  irresistible  tendency  to  inaction  which 
vitiates  the  good  beginning  of  so  many  well-meaning  men 
and  women.  "  'ilie  devil  is  now  engaged  in  mortal  comljat 
with  your  guardian  angel,"  exclaimed  the  prefect  of  some 
ecclesiastical  seminary  in  Italy  to  a  lazy  student  who  was 
lying  in  bed,  and  whom  he  was  exhorting  to  go  down  to 
divine  service. 

"What?"  said  the  slumbering  sluggard,  turning  over  on 
to  the  other  side,  "  my  guardian  angel  fighting  the  devil  on 
the  question  of  early  rising?  Well,  I  have  confidence  in  my 
guardian  angel,  who  is  bound  to  win.  I  will  watch  them 
ijoth  from  this  coign  of  Vantage,  till  the  fight  is  over.  Have 
^  no  fear  for  the  result." 

Now  this  is  precisely  the  Russian's  position  in  respect  to 
the  question  of  self-help.  He  lies  listlessly  in  his  place  and 
lazily  watches  what  he  deems  the  finger  of  Fate  forming  and 
shaping  the  go'od  and  bad  events  of  his  own  existence. 
With  fate  all  things  are  possible  and  are  equally  probable. 
There  is  no  everlasting  yea  or  everlasting  nay  in  the  Rus- 
sian's theology  or  philosophy.  Religion  shows  him  a  hell 
whence  there  is  no  redemption,  a  heaven  whence  there  is 
no  fall.  Science  puts  him  in  possession  of  truths  that  are 
unassailable,  and  experience  gives  him  facts  that  are  as 
certain  as  his  existence.  Yet  he  thinks  and  speaks  and 
acts  in  utter  defiance  of  them  all,  for  down  in  the  hidden 
depths  of  his  consciousness  he  has  a  confused  notion  that 
God  or  fate  my  alter  these  things  any  day  in  his  favor,  if 
desirable,  and  that  none  of  them  are  final.  Finality  does 
not  exist  in  any  shape  or  form  for  the  Russian.  The  arch- 
angels and  seraphs  may  yet  fall  from  their  lofty  thrones,  the 
devil  has  a  fair  chance  of  salvation  ;  the  Caroline  Islands 
may  some  day  be  shown  to  be  in  the  Indian  Ocean,  and  the 
earth  prove  the  centre  of  the  solar  system  ;  and  all  this  in 
virtue  of  destiny,  which  though  almighty,  whimsical,  well- 


FATALISM.  37 

meaning,  and  mischievous  by  turns,  is  at  bottom  benevolent 
and  kindly,  willing  to  humor  all  desires  and  prepared  in  the 
next  life  to  make  things  right  and  comfortable.  His  is  the 
one  active  will  working  behind  ours,  moving  us  as  puppets 
in  the  Punch  and  Judy  show ;  thinking  with  our  minds, 
speaking  with  our  tongues,  and  living  with  our  lives.  A 
country  where  such  notions  are  prevalent,  is  naturally  un- 
favorable to  the  growth  of  Consul  Bernicks,  Pastor  Manders, 
or  Mayor  Stockmanns  —  of  those  living  pillars  of  society 
and  lights  of  Christianity  who  thank  God,  meaning  them- 
selves, that  they  are  not  as  other  men.  "  Unto  each  man 
happens  what  was  decreed  at  his  birth,"  is  one  of  the 
countless  proverbs  which  embody  that  national  Russian 
solution  of  the  problem  of  free-will.  Others  are  :  "  What  is 
to  be  will  be."  "You  cannot  run  away  from  fate,  not  even 
on  horseback."  Nor  is  it  the  merely  material  side  of 
destiny,  so  to  say,  that  is  brought  out  in  such  bold  relief  in 
the  proverbs  and  the  conduct  of  the  Russian  people  ;  its 
moral  aspect  is  no  less  emphatically  accentuated.  "  Sin 
and  sorrow  overtake  all  men  aUke."  "  If  a  dog  is  to  be 
beaten,  there  will  be  no  lack  of  sticks."  "A  fool  shoots, 
but  God  bears  the  bullets."  "  The  wolf  seizes  the  destined 
sheep,"  etc.,  etc. 

Hence  there  is  no  inexpiable  sin,  no  social  hell  for  the 
upper  or  lower  classes  of  Russian  society.  How  low  soever 
a  man  or  a  woman  may  have  fallen,  he  or  she  is  never  held 
to  be  irredeemably  lost.  They  can  always  come  back  to 
their  former  places  without  causing  "  doubt,  hesitation,  or 
pain."  A  man  who  has  irreparably  wronged  you,  blasted 
your  cherished  hopes,  blighted  your  life,  ruined  those 
nearest  and  dearest  to  you,  will  after  the  lapse  of  a  few 
months  seek  you  out  and  address  you  in  the  most  winning 
way,  sure  that  you  are  glad  to  let  bygones  be  forgotten  and 
renew  the  friendship  of  the  past.  And  he  is  only  judging 
you  by  the  highest  standard  he  knows  —  to  wliich  his  own 
life  more  or  less  conforms  —  utterly  unconscious  that  it  im- 
plies anything  incompatible  with  your  conception  of  a 
Bayard.  I  could  illustrate  this  by  numerous  instances,  some 
of  which  came  under  my  own  observation ;  but  I  prefer  to 
restrict  myself  to  one  or  two  that  have  the  advantage  of 
being  notorious.  A  few  years  ago  a  well-known  capitalist 
of  Moscow,  on  his  return  home  from  the  Exchange,  be- 
came aware  that  a  daring  burglary  had  been  committed 
during  his  absence,  his  desk  having  been  broken  open  and  a 


38  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

sum  of  five  hundred  roubles  abstracted.  Suspicion  at  first 
took  no  definite  shape  ;  but  at  last  the  butler  suggested  the 
name  of  the  family  physician  —  a  man  who  was  under  in- 
numerable obligations  to  the  capitalist,  having  been  rescued 
when  a  boy  from  abject  poverty,  sent  to  school  and  to  the 
University  at  his  expense  until  he  obtained  his  medical  de- 
gree, and  being  ever  since  in  receipt  of  a  large  yearly 
salary  from  him  for  the  discharge  of  the  nominal  duties  of 
family  physician.  The  suggestion  was  naturally  treated  as  a 
foul-mouthed  calumny  at  first ;  but  the  doctor  was  soon 
sent  for  and  questioned.  He  began  by  denying  the  charge, 
but,  like  most  Russian  criminals,  ended  by  confessing  it. 
He  pleaded  necessity  in  palliation  of  the  deed,  and  tried  to 
prove  it  by  saying  that  the  money  was  indispensable,  as  he 
was  morally  bound  to  make  a  present  of  a  costly  necklace 
to  a  gypsy  woman  whose  favors  he  had  been  enjoying  for 
some  time  past.  He  then  asked  for  forgiveness,  and  with- 
out more  ado  received  it.  And  his  friendly  relations  with 
his  benefactor  continue  as  if  nothing  had  occurred  to  ruffle 
them.  He  is  as  respectable  and  respected  as  ever.^  An- 
other instance  is  afforded  by  the  case  of  the  notorious 
revolutionist,  Leo  Tikhomiroff,  whom  the  present  Czar 
lately  pardoned  on  his  expressing  deep  contrition  and 
writing  a  recantation  of  all  his  errors.  'I'his  individual  re- 
turned to  Russia  in  1889  and  called  on  the  late  Count 
Tolstoy,  Minister  of  the  Interior,  who  was  so  delighted  with 
the  uncompromising  thoroughness  of  his  new  convictions, 
and  was  so  taken  with  the  earnestness  of  the  man,  that  he 
actually  asked  him  for  his  photograph  and  autographs  as 
souvenirs.  Leo  Tikhomiroff  is  now  one  of  the  pillars  of 
the  reactionary  party  in  Russia,  one  of  the  lights  of  the 
Moscow  Gazette,  in  the  columns  of  which  paper  he  ])ub- 
lishes  endless  diatribes  against  Russian  liberalism  as  hollow 
and  as  lifeless  as  a  two  hours'  sermon  in  a  parish  church  in 
France. 

It  is  not  surprising  under  such  circumstances  that  un- 
merited misfortune  and  richly  deserved  punishment  should 
be  indiscriminately  confounded  in  the  one  comprehensive 
conception  of  Destiny,  or  that  disgrace  and  suffering  com- 
ing in  the  guise  of  retribution  for  odious  crimes  have  no 
corrective  or  deterrent  effect  upon  the  average  Russian, 
whose  motto  is  hodie  mihi  eras  tibi.     The  Russian  criminal 

^Novoye  Vremya,  April  13,  1889. 


FATALISM.  39 

is  as  patient  and  resigned  under  condign  punishment  as 
under  wanton  persecution,  and  his  friends  are  lavish  of  their 
sympathies,  as  becomes  genuine  fatahsts ;  both,  mindful  of 
one  of  the  proverbs  of  which  the  Russian  language  is  one 
vast  mosaic,  proclaiming  that  all  such  calamities,  like  spring 
rains  and  evening  dew,  fall  alike  abundantly  upon  good  men 
and  evil,  and  that  immunity  therefrom  is  the  result  of  per- 
sonal luck,  not  the  meed  of  right  conduct.  And  the  most 
ferocious  and  hardened  criminal  is  always  sure  of  evoking  a 
sigh  of  pity  such  as  that  which  was  breathed  by  the  tender- 
hearted Adah  for  lost,  impenitent  Lucifer. 

"  Sleep ;  God  will  keep  watch  and  ward  for  you,"  is  a 
saying  of  the  poet  Lermontoff's  that  correctly  describes  the 
mental,  moral,  and  political  attitude  of  the  millions  of  mis- 
erable human  beings  who  dreamily  acknowledge  the  sway  of 
the  Tsar,  staggering  and  stumbling  under  the  burdens  of 
life,  as  in  a  painful  half-conscious  stupor.  The  extent  to 
which  fatalism  and  shiftlessness,  with  all  the  other  vices  of 
which  they  are  the  source,  have  eaten  into  the  Russian 
character,  can  with  difficulty  be  realized  by  those  whose 
knowledge  of  the  people  is  not  derived  from  personal  ex- 
perience. Even  in  things  that  interest  him  most  the 
typical  Russian  is  strangely  apathetic,  and  the  terribly  sig- 
nificant expression,  "  I  waved  my  hand  at  it,"  meaning 
"  I  have  given  up  all  further  thought  of  it,"  is  daily  and 
hourly  heard  from  men  who,  at  the  first  little  obstacle 
they  encounter,  withdraw  from  the  race  within  easy  distance 
of  the  goal.  Some  idea,  however,  of  Russian  sluggishness 
and  shiftlessness  may  be  formed  by  those  who  have  read 
Gontscharoff's  novel  Ohlomoff,  and  can  picture  to  them- 
selves a  vast  empire  peopled  by  undeveloped  types  of 
humanity  welting  in  chaotic  ignorance  and  misery,  in 
various  degrees  of  disintegration  from  the  action  of  that 
fearful  solvent  nameless  in  the  English  tongue,  and  which 
Russians  now  term  Oblomofifism.  This  combination  of 
fatalism,  will-paralysis,  indifference,  and  grovelling  instincts 
gives  us  a  clue  to  the  marvellous  endurance  of  the  masses, 
whose  mode  of  life  is  at  times  more  bleak,  cheerless,  and 
less  human  than  that  of  the  grazing  monks  of  ISIesopotamia 
described  by  Sozomen,  whose  sufferings  were  at  least  the 
result  of  choice.^     For  ages  they  have  been  taught  by  word 

1  Grass  and  a  substitute  for  bread  ingeniously  made  of  the  powdered 
bark  of  a  tree  flavored  with  flour  is  sometimes  the  staple  food  of  the  worsj- 


40  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

of  mouth  and  by  the  lessons  of  daily  experience  to  take  no 
thought  for  the  morrow ;  they  have  been  trained  by  the 
Government  and  counselled  by  their  Church  to  look  to 
others  for  all  things  needful,  to  i)ut  their  trust  in  princes 
and  powers,  visible  and  invisible ;  and  the  outcome  of  this 
habit  is  on  the  one  hand  a  degree  of  shiftlessness  compared 
with  which  Mr.  Micawber's  waiting  for  something  to  turn  up 
was  sublimated  worldly  wisdom,  and  on  the  other  a  lively 
expectation  of  daily  miracles  in  which  the  most  spoiled 
thaumaturgus  of  the  Middle  Ages  never  ventured  to  in- 
dulge.^ The  groundwork  of  the  average  Russian's  life- 
philosophy  is  composed  of  two  fundamental  maxims,  one 
l)eing  the  Russian  equivalent  for  Mr.  Toots'  fovorite  dictum, 
"  It's  of  no  consequence"  {7>si6h  roviioh),  and  the  other  an 
untranslateable  term  {avoss')  sometimes  rendered  by 
"mayhap,"  or  "somehow,"  but  in  reality  a  sort  of  sacra- 
mental formula,  shifting  to  the  Fates  the  responsibility  for 
the  consequences  of  a  hope  entertained  or  an  act  to  be 
performed,  and  challenging  them  to  intervene  and  set  at 
naught  the  laws  of  the  universe,  even  to  the  extent  of  saving 
the  life  of  him  who  is  recklessly  rushing  upon  destruction. 

Hence  the  persistent  refusal  of  the  Russian  to  shape  and 
vary  his  actions  according  to  the  objects  in  view,  for  he  has 
a  deep-rooted  feeling  that  all  his  words  and  deeds,  however 
incongruous  or  wide  of  the  mark,  are  endowed  with  some 
mysterious  power  of  righting  themselves  automatically,  and 
like  Vathek's  sabre  will  do  their  work  independently  of  the 
incompetency  or  clumsiness  of  him  who  uses  them.  "  It 
will  all  be  ground  up  fine  and  make  excellent  flour,"  is  one 
of  his  favorite  proverbs,  when  speaking  of  the  tares  and 
sweepings  of  life  that  so  often  mix  with,  and  outweigh  its 
corn,  and  he  continues  cheerfully  to  let  things  take  their 


off  of  these  modern  ^oo-koI,  who,  wlien  unfortunate  or  fortunate  enough  to  be 
destitute  of  even  this  sorry  apology  for  sustenance,  have  no  alternative  but 
sheer  starvation,  and,  like  the  dumb,  patient  ox,  after  lowing  in  vain  for 
fodder,  lie  down  and  die  without  a  murmur.  (Cf.  Moscow  Gazette,  April 
loth,  1888;  January  i8th,  1888;  and  the  journal  Day,  25th  March,  1888.)  It 
is  astonishing,  and  of  good  augury,  that  in  spile  of  the  scant  reasons  they 
have  for  luigging  life,  they  seldom  think  of  jwssing  through  what  Epictetus 
calls  the  "  open  door,"  and  that  having  emulated  the  sect  of  the  Grazers  from 
dire  necessity,  thev  do  not  imitate  tliat  of  the  Circinncel/ioiies  or  suicides 
from  deliberate  choice.  But  the  Russian  character  is  one  mass  of  incon- 
sistencies. 

1  That  this  presumptuous  hope  is  not  always  vain  is  obvious  to  those  who 
remember  the  details  of  the  railway  accident  of  October,  1888,  at  Borki,  when, 
by  a  curious  freak  of  chance,  the  Imperial  family  had  a  hairbreadth  escape 
from  death. 


FATALISM.  41 

own  course,  confident  that  everything  will  be  for  the  best  at 
last.  This  childlike  or  childish  faith  is  made  manifest  in  a 
thousand  ways,  all  equally  hurtful  to  the  interests  of  society. 
It  emboldens  him  to  reverse  Napoleon's  rule  of  life  and  leave 
as  much  to  chance  as  is  consistent  with  his  keeping  outside 
a  prison  and  a  lunatic  asylum  ;  thus  it  imparts  to  a  railway 
built  over  crumbling  embankments  ^  and  laid  on  rotten  half- 
burnt  sleepers-  the  strength  it  should  have  received  from 
nature  and  engineering  skill ;  it  supports  tottering  railway 
bridges  over  which  no  sensible  man  would  consent  to  for- 
ward his  furniture  in  a  goods  train  ;  ^  it  encourages  architects 
to  build  vast  public  and  private  edifices  —  like  that  lately 
erected  by  the  merchants  of  Moscow  —  which  a»sudden 
gust  of  wind  or  the  shaking  of  the  soil  by  passing  vans 
causes  to  fall  down  like  the  wall  of  Jericho  at  the  shout  of 
the  men  of  Joshua,  and  crush  to  death  more  victims  than 
were  buried  alive  by  their  Pagan  ancestors  in  the  foundation 
of  whole  cities  ;  it  keeps  them  of  good  cheer  when,  as  jury- 
men trying  prisoners  for  grave  crimes,  they  send  one  man 
to  Siberia  and  let  another  dangerous  criminal  loose  upon 
society  solely  because  they  are  in  a  hurry  to  get  home  to 
supper  and  to  bed,  or  because  the  next  day  is  a  holiday  ;  * 
it  makes  them  feel  that  they  are  putting  their  interests  wholly 
in  the  hands  of  Providence  when  they  send  out  utterly  un- 

1  Cf.  the  terrible  railway  catastrophe  at  KukuTeff,  near  Kursk,  the  vic- 
tims of  which  were  very  numerous,  although  their  exact  number  never  was 
known. 

^  Cf.  the  Russian  newspapers,  chn-ing  the  first  ten  days  of  November,  1888, 
passim.  One  of  the  causes  of  the  accident  at  Borki  to  the  Imperial  train  was 
declared  to  be  the  sleepers,  which  were  made  of  charred  wood  taken  from 
a  forest  that  had  been  on  fire. 

3  Cf.  Novoye  l-'rcmya,  7th  September,  1889. 

4  This  is  not  a  flower  of  rhetoric,  but  a  statement  founded  on  numerous 
facts,  of  which  the  following  is  a  specimen.  In  Borissoglebsk,  Government 
of  Tamboff,  in  December,  1886,  a  peasant  woman  was  tried  for  the  poison- 
ing of  her  husband,  the  evidence  being  such  as  no  British  jury  would  con- 
vict upon.  The  Russian  jury  unhesitatingly  found  her  guilty,  and  she  was 
formally  condemned  to  banishment  from  European  Russia  for  life,  and  to 
some  years'  hard  labor  in  those  mines  of  Siberia  which  have  lately  been  so 
vividly  described.  The  next  day  that  same  jury,  refreshed  and  bright  after 
a  good  night's  rest,  spontaneously  declared  to  the  court  that  they  hatl 
brought  in  their  verdict,  knowing  it  to  be  —  incorrect,  because  they  were 
very  tired  at  the  time,  and  that  they  were  now  desirous  of  having  it  quashed. 
The  court  accepted  the  statement,  and  decided  to  lay  the  case  before  the 
Senate.  Were  the  jury  punislied,  one  naturally  asks,  for  this  flagrant  viola- 
tion of  their  solemn  oath?  The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  newspaper 
which  reported  the  case  (  Voroiiesh  Telegraph,  24th  December,  and  the 
Kharkoff  Governmental  Gazette,  2Sth  December,  1886  (which  sympatheti- 
cally concludes  with  this  equivocal  remark:  "  The  conduct  of  the  jury  met 
with  universal  approval." 


42  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

seaworthy  vessels  like  the  ill-fated  Vesta,  which  a  heavy  sea 
will  swallow  up  with  the  lives  of  all  on  board ;  and  it  pre- 
serves them  from  that  momentary  qualm  of  conscience  whicli 
made  even  that  Pillar  of  Society  (Cf.  Ibsen's  play),  Consul 
Bernick,  anxious  to  have  Rector  Rorlund's  absolution  in  one 
form  or  another  before  despatching  the  Indian  Girl ;  in  a 
word  it  gives  the  highest  conceivable. sanction  to  acts  of 
commission  and  omission  which  nothing  short  of  a  revelation 
in  thunders  and  lightnings  could  have  justified  in  the  old 
ages  of  theocracy,  and  only  proven  lunacy  could  excuse 
\n  most  civilized  countries  to-day.  In  Russia  these  acts  are 
not  held  to  be  criminal,  and  considering  the  intellectual  and 
moral  lewel  of  the  mass  of  the  people,  it  would  be  very  hard 
if  they  were.  The  following  case  in  point,  deliberately 
chosen  for  its  comparative  tameness,  will  help  to  explain 
what  is  meant.  There  are  about  2,500  steamers,  barges,  and 
various  small  trading  vessels  on  the  river  Volga  every  year, 
towards  the  conclusion  of  the  Fair  of  Nijni  Novgorod, 
the  comparative  safety  of  which  is  as  much  the  result  of 
mere  chance  in  the  face  of  immense  odds  as  is  that  of  little 
children  abandoned  to  themselves,  over  whom  a  special 
Providence  is  popularly  said  to  watch.  "  Wherever  you 
look,"  says  M.  Lender,  who  has  written  on  the  subject, 
"  you  find  that  the  regulations  laid  down  with  a  view  to 
insure  the  safety  of  the  shipping  are  continually  broken 
through,  especially  at  night.  Here  the  lamps  on  the  mast 
are  not  lighted,  there  a  barge  is  lying  in  such  a  position  that 
the  first  vessel  that  comes  along  must  inevitably  run  into  her. 
Another  boat  takes  up  its  place  in  the  very  centre  of  the 
channel  where  all  the  vessels  that  go  in  or  out  must  pass, 
and  although  the  night  is  pitch  dark  the  crew  have  not  the 
slightest  fear  for  their  safety  or  for  that  of  their  craft.  To 
their  thinking  it  lies  there  quite  as  secure  as  in  a  garden 
pond.  The  police  boat,  however,  approaches ;  the  usual 
summons  is  called  out,  but  on  the  barge  everything  is  as 
silent  as  death.  No  one  answers ;  no  one  stirs.  The  sum- 
mons is  repeated  —  but  still  there  is  no  response.  A  man  is 
sent  to  board  the  barge ;  he  seeks  for  the  crew  and  finds 
them  stowed  away  in  out-of-the-way  places,  their  loud 
snoring  the  only  sign  of  life.  At  last  he  succeeds  in  waking 
them  up  and  a  drowsy  half-dressed  man  appears,  between 
whom  and  the  representative  of  the  police  the  following 
dialogue  ensues  :  '  Why  don't  you  light  the  lamps  ?  '  '  Be- 
cause all  the  candles  are  used  up.'     '  Well,  then,  why  do  you 


FATALISM.  43 

take  up  your  position  right  in  the  middle  of  the  channel  that 
has  to  be  kept  clear  for  steamers?  A  steamer  will  surely 
run  into  you  and  smash  your  boat  to  pieces  ! '  '  Oh,  your 
honor,  we  hope  not.  God  is  merciful.' '  A  few  years  ago, 
in  one  of  the  country  districts  near  Petersburg,  one  of  those 
fires  broke  out  which  periodically  destroy  scores  of  houses 
owing  to  the  inflammable  material  of  which  they  are  built, 
and  to  the  absence  of  fire-extinguishing  apparatus.  The 
members  of  the  district  police,  whose  duty  it  was  to  go  and 
assist  in  putting  it  out,  stayed  on  in  the  coffee-house  where 
they  were,  and  when  asked  by  anxious  civilians  where  the 
fire  was,  replied,  '  How  do  we  know  ?    Somewhere  there.'  "  ^ 

This  mixture  of  irreligious  faith  and  presumptuous  hope 
lies  at  the  root  of  most  of  the  crimes  and  avoidable  acci- 
dents of  which  a  large  part  of  contemporary  Russian  history 
is  composed.  It  is  rank  Malebrancheism  in  the  sphere  of 
ethics  :  a  belief  that  mere  mortals  are  but  the  occasions  of 
all  their  so-called  acts,  which  are  really  performed  by  God 
or  fate,  the  sole  efficient  cause,  who  can  shape  and  form 
them  as  he  pleases.  "  Man  may  walk,  but  it  is  God  who 
leads  him,"  is  a  Russian  proverb  which  the  French  Ora- 
torian  might  have  taken  for  the  motto  of  his  Recherches. 
This  baneful  belief  tinges  all  the  qualities  of  head  and  heart 
which  it  has  not  actually  created,  transforming  even  virtues 
into  positive  vices. 

If  hospitality  were,  as  the  Talmud  teaches,  the  pith  and 
marrow  of  divine  worship,  then  Russians  might  claim  to  be 
a  pre-eminently  religious  people ;  for  there  is  no  other 
European,  and  perhaps  no  inhabitant  of  any  other  country 
\n  the  globe,  who  will  more  cheerfully  share  his  last  loaf  with 
the  hungry  stranger  than  the  Russian  peasant  or  merchant. 
Nor  is  this  custom  in  Russia,  as  in  civilized  countries,  con- 
fined to  the  poorer  classes,  whose  generosity  proverbially 
increases  with  their  indigence.  Ungrudging,  genial  hospi- 
tality, suggestive  of  that  which  characterized  the  contempo- 
raries of  Abraham,  is  almost  as  marked  a  feature  of  the 
higher  classes  as  of  the  lower.  Thus  the  inconveniences 
resulting  from  the  absence  of  hotels  and  inns  in  the  interior 
of  Russia  is  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the  spontaneous 
and  cordial  hospitality  dispensed  with  consummate  tact  by 
landowners,  proprietors  and  directors  of  factories,  marshals 


1  Cf.  also  Svett,  I2th  June,  1889. 

2  Cf.  Graschdanin ,  24th  August,  1889. 


44  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

of  the  nobility  and  others,  who  practically  keep  open  house  ; 
and  if  they  do  not  often  entertain  angels  unaware,  never  at 
least  expose  themselves  to  the  danger  of  making  awkward 
biographical  discoveries,  by  putting  indiscreet  questions  to 
their  passing  guests.  Once  while  staying  on  a  visit  at  the 
house  of  a  friend  in  one  of  the  southern  governments  —  a 
Russian  Squire  Hardcastle  —  a  day  rarely  passed  that  I  did 
not  meet  at  least  one  such  traveller  at  table.  They  were 
generally  men  of  some  education,  but  of  whose  pedigree, 
antecedents,  and  intentions  my  host  knew  far  less  than  his- 
tory knows  about  those  of  the  Iron  Mask.  I  never  saw 
more  than  one  at  a  time,  though  sometimes  as  many  as 
three  are  entertained  simultaneously.  They  seldom  stayed 
longer  than  two  days,  and  generally  only  a  day  and  night ; 
were  shown  into  a  comfortable  bedroom  and  invited  to  take 
their  meals  with  the  host  and  hostess,  whom  they  usually 
endeavored  to  entertain  with  the  political  news  of  the  day. 

Hospitality  has  been  aptly  termed  the  virtue  of  benevo- 
lent barbarism.  There  are  aspects  of  it,  however,  which 
might  well  be  named  vices,  if  only  they  who  practise  them 
were  tutored  enough  to  distinguish  the  boundary  line  where 
virtue  ends  and  vice  begins.  y\nd  these  are  precisely  the 
forms  of  it  which  one  most  frequently  meets  with  in  Russia, 
where  numbers  of  families,  lately  prosperous  or  wealthy,  are 
yearly  reduced  to  beggary  by  hospitality  as  ruinous  and  as 
meaningless  as  that  of  Timon  of  Athens.  I  am  personally 
accjuainted  with  several  noble  families  of  St.  Petersburg  and 
Moscow,  who  spend  on  the  dinners  and  soiri'es  which  they 
give  during  the  season,  a  sum  of  money  equivalent  to  their 
yearly  income  —  which,  it  should  be  remarked,  is  not  large 
according  to  British  ideas.  A  friend  of  mine,  a  general,  was 
wont  to  languish  with  his  family  for  weeks  on  Lenten  fare, 
in  order  to  be  in  a  position  to  give  a  recherche  dinner  to  his 
friends  twice  or  thrice  a  year.  The  wedding  dinners  of  the 
merchants  —  often  attended  by  utter  strangers;  the  funeral 
banquets  given  to  commemorate  the  death  of  a  husband, 
wife,  or  parent ;  the  feasting  during  the  Carnival  antl  in 
Easter  week,  make  almost  as  strong  demands  on  the  purse 
of  the  host  as  on  the  health  of  the  guests.  "  Help  your 
guest  till  he  cannot  lift  his  food  over  his  lip  "  is  the  popular 
maxim  bearing  upon  the  exercise  of  hospitality,  which  is  too 
literally  observed  by  the  middle  classes. 

"  Iliiic  subitx-  niorlcs  atquc  intcstata  senectus." 


FATALISM.  45 

Fortunes  are  as  recklessly  squandered  in  this  way  by  the 
Russians  of  to-day  as  they  were  by  the  Romans  of  the 
Empire.  What  has  remained,  for  instance,  of  the  princely 
fortunes  of  Prince  V  .  .  .  sky,  of  Prince  D.,  who  has  to 
entertain  at  times  members  of  the  imperial  family,  of  the 
late  Prince  S.  D.,  but  scraps  and  leavings  which  taken  all 
together  would  not  have  sufficed  to  keep  Adpicius,  the 
Roman,  from  committing  suicide.  It  is  no  secret  that  a 
very  large  proportion  of  the  noble  families  of  the  two  capi- 
tals, whose  brilliant  soirees  and  at-homes  are  the  talk  of  the 
press  and  the  wonder  of  foreign  embassadors,  are  living 
greatly  beyond  their  income,  some  of  them  actually  lacking 
the  means  of  paying  their  men  and  maidservants  their  pal- 
try monthly  wages.  Numbers  of  generals  are  well-known 
bankrupts,  the  third  or  half  of  whose  salaries  is  monthly 
deducted  by  the  Treasury  and  handed  over  to  their  credit- 
ors.^ It  would  seem  as  if  what  Carlyle  calls  "  the  great 
bottomless  pit  of  bankruptcy "  were  ominously  yawning 
under  this  entire  system  of  acted  unveracity.  But  the 
thought,  if  it  occurs  to  his  mind,  has  no  terrors  for  the  Rus- 
sian fatalist,  who,  like  the  reckless  revellers  of  plague-stricken 
Florence  described  by  Boccaccio,  continues  gayly  to  amuse 
himself  on  the  brink  of  ruin.  Every  Russian,  whatever  his 
social  position,  his  means,  or  his  needs,  beginning  with  the 
Tsar  and  ending  with  the  scullion,  deems  it  a'  sort  of  sacred 
duty  to  entertain  his  friends  and  relations  on  the  festival  of 
his  patron  saint,  many  spending  their  last  borrowed  coin 
upon  these  ruinous  merrymakings,  and,  like  Dick  Swiveller, 
turning  whole  streets  into  no-thoroughfares  bristling  with 
impatient  creditors. 

Another  of  the  visible  effects  of  fatalism,  to  which  I  can 
scarcely  do  more  than  allude,  and  which  created  unfeigned 
surprise  in  the  French,  who  lately  had  an  opportunity  of 
studying  it  in  certain  productions  of  Russian  literature,  is 
repentance,  or  rather  what  the  Russians  mistake  for  it,  con- 
fession of  guilt.  '-Samovar  et  r^pentir,"  exclaimed  the 
French  critics  who  sat  in  judgment  on  Ostroffsky's  drama. 
The  Thunderstorm,  "  are  the  two  salient  symbols  of  Rus- 
sian civilization."     When  a  Russian  unburdens  his  breast  of 


1  It  is  the  privilege  of  Russian  officers  to  enjoy  immunity  from  the 
bankruptcy  laws.  When  one  of  these  cannot  meet  his  liabilities  his  super- 
tiuous  property  is  sold  and  part  of  his  pay  handed  over  to  his  creditors : 
one-third  if  he  is  married ;  one-half  if  single. 


46  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

a  crime,  even  though  eager  and  anxious  to  repeat  it,  he  feels 
that  he  has  made  what  the  Apostle  Paul  terms  "  confession 
unto  salvation,"  and  is  authorized  to  begin  a  new  score 
forthwith.  Indeed  the  popular  proverb,  which  is  at  bottom 
merely  the  embodiment  of  the  popular  practice,  says  as 
much  :  "  He  who  confesses  has  repented,  and  he  who  has 
repented  has  wiped  out  his  sin."  Nothing  is  more  striking 
or  characteristic  in  the  annals  of  Russian  criminal  justice 
than  the  almost  mathematical  certainty  with  which  one  can 
predict  that  a  person  arrested  on  suspicion,  even  though 
there  be  no  legal  proofs  of  guilt,  and  no  likelihood  of  their 
ever  being  obtained,  will  take  the  Jugc  d' Instruction  into 
his  confidence,  and  glibly  relate  every  detail  of  his  share  in 
the  transaction.  Out  of  sixty-five  criminal  cases  taken  at 
•random,  I  find  that  in  forty-eight  the  prisoners  were  con- 
victed on  their  own  confession,  and  in  most  of  the  remainder 
there  was  no  need  for  self-accusation,  as  the  criminals  were 
caught  red-handed,  in  flagrante  delicto.  Were  it  not  for 
this,  only  a  fraction  of  the  criminal  population  now  arrested 
and  brought  to  trial  every  year  would  be  molested  by  the 
police,  who  are  deservedly  held  to  be  the  most  inefficient 
detectors  of  crime  in  Europe. 


SLOTH.  47 


CHAPTER  III. 

SLOTH. 

There  are  many  ingenious  explanations  of  the  stoical 
contempt  of  death  which  is  so  marked  a  characteristic  of  the 
vast  majority  of  Russians,  but  the  most  plausible  of  them  all 
would  appear  to  be  that  which  attributes  it  to  their  fatalistic 
turn  of  mind,  suggested  as  it  is  by  careful  observation,  and 
confirmed  by  the  proverbs  and  sayings  of  the  people.  Still 
it  cannot  be  gainsaid  that  the  galling  conditions  and  grim 
surroundings  of  actual  life  are,  and  have  been  for  ages, 
amply  sufficient  to  account  for  even  more  desperate  feelings 
than  contempt  of  death  ;  and  foreigners  in  Russia  often  un- 
consciously repeat  the  saying  of  the  Sybarite,  who  when  he 
had  come  to  Sparta  and  seen  what  a  miserable  life  the 
people  were  forced  to  lead  there,  ceased  to  wonder  at  their 
valor,  exclaiming,  "I  myself  would  rather  rush  upon  a  sword- 
point  than  lead  such  a  wretched  existence."  A  whole  string 
of  proverbs,^  which  are  in  every  one's  mouth,  go  to  show 
that  the  Russian's  desire  to  die  is  at  least  as  strong  as  the 
natural  instinct  which  makes  us  all  cling  to  life,  and  yet  he 
lingers  listlessly  on,  unconsciously  realizing  Ovid's  ideal  of 
fortitude  :  — 

"  Rebus  in  adversis  facile  est  contemnere  vitam, 
Fortiter  ille  facit  qui  miser  esse  potest ;  " 

and  putting  himself  wholly  in  the  hands  of  Fate,  in  which 
he  is  as  firm  a  believer  as  Lermontoff's  Voohtch  who,  hav- 
ing proved  his  faith  in  predestination  by  pulling  the  trigger 
of  a  loaded  pistol  levelled  at  his  head  and  won  the  wager 
when  it  hung  fire,  was  brutally  murdered  that  same  night  by 
a  drunken  Cossack. 


1  For  instance  :  "  If  you  mourn,  God  will  lengthen  your  life  ;  "  "  To  live 
is  more  terrible  than  to  die ;  "  "  To  live  is  to  groan  ;  by  night  in  dreams,  by 
day  from  suffering."  This  last  saying  recalls  Job's  plaintive  cry:  "When  I 
say,  My  bed  shall  comfort  me,  my  couch  shall  ease  my  complaint ;  then 
thou  scarest  me  with  dreams  and  terrifiest  me  through  visions."  —  Job  vii, 
13.  14- 


48  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

It  is  in  perfect  keeping  with  such  views  about  Ufe  that 
time,  the  stuff  that  hfc  is  made  of,  should  be  greatly  under- 
valued ;  and  it  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  it  could  not  be 
held  cheaper  or  be  more  wantonly  wasted  than  by  the  Rus- 
sians who  talk  and  act  —  or  rather  talk  and  forbear  to  act 
—  as  if  in  their  eyes  a  thousand  years  were  as  one  day. 
The  very  language  they  speak  bears  witness  to  their  incur- 
able procrastination,  making  an  hour  signify  the  twinkling 
of  an  eye.^  I'he  ordinary  term  for  holiday,  which  Teutonic 
nations  call  a  "  Day  of  Solemnity,"  "  Day  of  Holiness,"  or 
"  God's  Day,"  means  literally  in  Russian  "  a  day  of  idle- 
ness," -  while  the  word  week  signifies  in  Russian  that  "  time 
when  no  work  is  done."  ^  And  the  customs  and  habits  of 
the  people  are  in  strict  harmony  with  these  curious  concep- 
tions. No  one  is  ever  in  a  hurry  in  the  land  where  festina 
Icnte  is  looked  upon  as  the  grand  rule  of  life,  even  though 
he  have  the  most  potent  incentives  to  despatch.  A  striking 
instance  of  this  constitutional  inability  to  increase  the  tradi- 
tional creeping-pace  with  which  everything  moves  in  Russia, 
is  to  be  found  in  the  building  of  the  church  in  commemo- 
ration of  the  late  Emperor  on  the  spot  where  he  was  foully 
murdered.  It  was  commenced  in  1881  in  what  seemed  hot 
haste  at  the  time.  Eight  years  have  dragged  their  slow 
length  along  since  then,  and  yet,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
present  year,*  the  temple  in  so  far  resembled  that  of  Jeru- 
salem, that  there  was  not  one  stone  visibly  standing  upon 
another  ;  at  which  state  of  things  the  present  Emperor  was 
so  indignant,  that  he  had  some  broad  hints  a  la  Dr.  Francia, 
conveyed  to  certain  of  the  parties  responsible,  who  are  now 
evincing  a  disposition  to  bestir  themselves.  Every  business 
in  life  is  conducted  on  the  same  principle  set  forth  in  the 
proverb,  "The  slower  you  drive  the  further  you'll  go."  I 
have  known  foreign  merchants  to  arrive  in  Russia  on  a 
Saturday  evening  too  late  to  transact  the  very  urgent  busi- 
ness for  which  they  had  come,  and  having  waited  feverishly 
till  Monday,  discovered  that  it  was  a  church  holiday  on 
which  no  man  can  work,  no  firm  do  business  ;  and  having 
made  praiseworthy  efforts  to  control  their  feelings  and  pos- 
sess their  souls  in  patience  till  Tuesday,  found  that  it  was 
the  Emperor's  birthday  or  name's-day,  and  equally  sacred 


1  Say  ischass,  lit.  =  "  this  hour,"  which  is  often  made  to  stretcli  over 
vast  periods  of  time,  is  the  common  Russian  word  for  "  in  a  moment," 
"  immediately." 

2  Prandnik,  ^  Niedielya.  ^  Written  in  1889. 


SLOTH.  49 

to  indolence.  In  a  provincial  city  it  is  enough  for  an  aver- 
age funeral  procession  to  pass  along  the  streets  for  cars  and 
cabs  to  pull  up,  tramcars  to  come  to  a  standstill,  the  pas- 
sengers to  get  out  and  gape,  and  traffic  generally  to  be  tem- 
porarily suspended.  In  all  other  departments  of  public  or 
private  activity  it  is  the  same.  Judicial  procedure  is  pro- 
verbially slow  in  most  countries  ;  and  it  would  be  no  easy 
matter  to  beat  the  records  of  the  English  Court  of  Chancery 
in  that  respect,  with  its  lawsuits  like  that  of  Jarndyce  v. 
Jarndyce  continuing  from  generation  to  generation.  But 
even  here  Russia  bears  off  the  palm.  The  District  Court  of 
Kherson  (near  Odessa),  for  instance,  has  a  case  still  before 
it  which  is  older  than  the  nineteenth  century.  The  object 
of  the  litigation  is  the  right  of  inheritance  to  the  property  of 
the  Shidansky  family,  the  proprietors  of  the  great  salt  works. 
The  suit  was  begun  towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, and  the  first  judgment  upon  its  merits  was  delivered  in 
1802.  Since  then  it  has  been  three  several  times  before  the 
Governing  Senate  —  the  Supreme  Court  of  Appeal  in  Rus- 
sia, It  is  now  being  carried  on  by  the  grandchildren  of 
the  first  plaintiffs,  and  lately  came  before  the  District  Court 
of  Kherson,  which  has  again  adjourned  it.^ 

The  post  and  the  telegraph  exist  in  Russia  as  in  England 
or  Germany,  but  their  real  significance  has  not  yet  been 
fully  grasped  by  the  people,  who  see  no  cause  for  complaint 
in  the  circumstance  that  a  telegram  reaches  its  destination 
no  quicker  than  a  letter  should,  and  a  letter  frequently  never 
reaches  it  at  all,  A  friend  of  mine  fell  ill  some  months  ago, 
and  sent  a  telegram  to  his  wife  who  was  living  with  their 
children  in  the  country  ten  miles  from  town.  Although  her 
country-house  was  only  ten  minutes'  walk  from  the  railway- 
station  that  telegram  took  eighteen  hours  and  a-half  to  reach 
her,  during  which  time  her  husband  lay  dangerously  ill  in 
his  town-house,  without  attendants.  And  this  is  by  no 
means  an  extreme  or  rare  case.  If  you  enter  the  chief 
telegraph-office  of  the  most  business-like  city  in  Russia  — 
Odessa — with  a  despatch,  on  the  speedy  transmission  of 
which  thousands  of  pounds,  or  interests  still  more  weighty, 
depend,  you  may  find  the  room  full  of  people,  especially  if 
it  is  near  two  o'clock  p.m.,  and  you  take  your  stand  behind 
the  last.  Suddenly  the  clerk  who  receives  the  telegrams 
stands  up,  surveys  the  public  with  a  quiet  smile,  and  leisurely 

1  Cf.  Novoye  Vremya,  7th  August,  1889. 


50  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

saunters  out.  You  wait  impatiently  ten  or  fifteen  minutes, 
and  then  offer  your  telegram  to  his  colleague,  who  is  sitting 
at  his  desk,  but  he  snappishly  informs  you  that  he  cannot 
receive  it.  Where,  you  ask,  is  the  man  who  can  take  it? 
He  is  gone  to  dinner,  he  tells  you,  and  you  must  wait  till  he 
comes  back.  "There  is  plenty  of  time,"  he  adds,  with  the 
air  of  a  man  who  could  say,  if  he  would  :  "  Sun,  stand  thou 
still  upon  Gibeon,  and  thou,  Moon,  in  the  valley  of  Ajalon." 
"  And  the  public  does  wait,"  concludes  the  journal  from 
which  this  scene  is  taken,  "  and  waits  half  an  hour,  an  hour, 
in  a  word  until  that  clerk  returns  to  his  desk."  ^ 

On  the  Volga,  during  the  fair  of  Nischny  Novgorod,  thou- 
sands of  passengers  are  conveyed  to  and  from  the  fair,  whose 
time  must  be  then,  if  ever,  extremely  precious,  as  the  loss  of 
a  single  hour  may,  and  frequently  does,  entail  the  loss  of 
large  sums  of  money.  And  yet  the  steam  navigation  com- 
panies are  as  wasteful  of  time,  even  then,  as  if,  like  the  in- 
habitants of  Luggnagg,  it  was  the  doubtful  privilege  of  their 
passengers  to  live  for  ever.  The  following  scene  which  took 
place  in  the  office  of  the  best  of  these  companies  was  de- 
scribed in  a  semi-official  organ  by  an  eye-witness  :  "  '  Will 
the  boat  soon  be  here  ? '  asks  one  of  the  intending  passen- 
gers. *  In  due  time,'  calmly  answers  the  clerk,  who  con- 
tinues to  sell  tickets.  The  '  due  time  '  arrives,  but  not  the 
steamer.  '  Will  it  soon  be  here?'  asks  voices  on  all  sides. 
'  This  minute ;  take  my  word  for  it.'  But  '  this  minute  ' 
seems  endless.  An  hour  passes.  Again  questions  are  asked, 
*  Will  it  soon  be  in?  '  '  Immediately,'  is  the  reply,  but  even 
this  '  immediately '  is  followed  by  no  satisfactory  results. 
Two,  three,  four  hours  pass,  but  the  steamboat  is  not  yet 
come,  and  still  the  agent  repeats  the  magic  word  '  imme- 
diately.' Meanwhile  the  steamer  of  another  company  comes 
in,  and  the  passengers,  weary  of  waiting,  want  their  money 
back  in  order  to  go  by  the  newly-arrived  boat.  'That  is 
impossible,'  remarks  the  agent,  '  but  don't  be  uneasy ;  our 
steamer  will  be  here  immediately.'  And  the  money  is  not 
returned.  Thus,  will  they,  nill  they,  they  are  forced  to  wait 
twelve  hours  before  the  steamboat  of  the  '  Mercury  Naviga- 
tion Company '  makes  its  appearance ;  from  five  o'clock 
A.M.,  till  evening,  amid  highly  disagreeable  surroundings  on 
the  river  bank,  exposed  to  the  fierce  heat  of  the  sun,  as  the 
small  rickety  office  could  not  accomodate  all  who  were  wait- 

1  Odessa  News,  4th  September,  1888. 


SLOTH.  5  r 

ing  for  the  boat !  "  ^  A  short  telegram  might  have  saved 
the  passengers  this  ruinous  loss  of  time,  but  neither  the  cap- 
tain of  the  vessel  nor  the  company's  agents,  who  knew  that 
the  boat  would  be  late,  thought  of  sending  it. 

In  this  country,  where  punctuality  and  thrift  of  time  have 
become  second  nature,  such  things  would  not  be  tolerated  a 
day.  In  Russia  they  excite  neither  wonder  nor  indignation, 
except  among  foreign  residents,  who  must  suffer  in  silence. 
No  matter  how  serious  or  urgent  his  business,  a  Russian  has 
always  the  leisure  to  turn  aside  from  the  straight  road  and 
"  tread  the  primrose  path  of  dalliance,"  as  heedless  of  the 
flight  of  time  as  if  his  life  consisted  of  Plato's  years,  each 
equal  to  25,000  ordinary  ones.  Yet  he  does  this  in  such  a 
simple,  natural.  Undine-like  way  that  one  has  not  the  heart 
to  rebuke  him. 

"  On  the  25th  July  last,  the  busiest  time  on  the  Volga,  the  Captain 
of  the  steamer  Saniolcl  was  walking  on  deck  when  his  cap  was  blown 
off.  He  ran  after  it  as  quickly  as  he  could,  but  it  was  blown  into  the 
water.  Without  a  shade  of  hesitation  he  gave  the  command  to  stop 
the  engines.  As  they  could  not  be  stopped  instantaneously,  when  the 
order  was  executed  the  cap  was  far  away.  A  second  order  was  given, 
the  steamer  turned,  and  steered  straight  for  the  captain's  head-gear, 
but  before  the  engines  could  be  stopped  it  was  outstripped  and  left 
behind.  Other  commands  were  issued,  the  direction  changed  and  the 
chase  recommenced,  but  in  spite  of  the  rapidity  of  the  vessel's  move- 
ments and  the  dexterity  of  the  crew,  the  cap  was  not  fished  up.  When- 
ever the  vessel  drew  near  the  floating  head-dress  and  it  seemed  that  in 
another  moment  it  would  be  caught  up  by  the  boat-hook  and  restored 
to  its  owner,  suddenly,  as  if  driven  of  set  purpose  by  a  wilful  wind  it 
swept  on  further  and  further  away.  The  steamer  would  then  dash 
wildly  after  it,  but  the  cap  would  again  escape,  to  the  bitter  disappoint- 
ment of  its  owner.  The  passengers  were  at  first  amused  at  the  spec- 
tacle of  a  steamer  chasing  a  cap,  but  when  thirty  minutes  had  been 
spent  to  no  purpose,  they  requested  that  the  vessel  should  resume  her 
trip.  But  while  the  captain  was  standing  irresolute  what  to  do,  Lebe- 
deff,  a  seaman,  jumped  in  with  his  clothes  on  and  swam  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  cap.  He  soon  came  up  with  it,  caught  it  between  his  teeth 
and  began  to  return  to  the  vessel.  He  had  to  swim  against  the  cur- 
rent, however,  and  it  soon  became  evident  that  he  had  not  strength 
enough  to  reach  the  vessel.  He  began  to  lose  ground  visibly  and  was 
being  carried  by  the  current  away  from  the  boat,  when  the  captain 
threw  out  a  life  buoy  which  he  failed  to  catch  hold  of.  On  this  he 
shouted  for  help  at  the  top  of  his  voice,  and  a  boat  was  lowered.  After 
some  trouble  he  was  rescued  and  brought  back  to  the  steamer,  but  the 
captain's  cap  was  never  recovered."- 

That  business  men  in  Russia,  especially  foreign  residents, 
require  an  imusual  stock  of  patience  to  bear  up  under  the 

1  Graschdiinin,  9th  September,  1889.   -  Grasc/idanin,  6th  September,  1889. 


52  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

occasional  disastrous  results  of  this  criminal  waste  of  time, 
needs  no  pointing  out  here.  Fancy  a  London  city  man 
compelled  to  fulfil  to  the  letter  the  following  formality  be- 
fore he  could  legally  receive  a  paltry  consignment  of  one 
civt.  of  dry  Swedish  bread,  these  formalities  not  containing 
anything  exceptional  for  his  particular  case,  but  constituting 
the  normal  rule  for  all. 

"I.  He  must  present  the  bill  of  lading  in  the  customers'  storehouse. 
2.  lie  must  deliver  it  to  an  interpreter.  3.  He  must  obtain  a  copy  of 
the  declaration.  4.  He  must  purchase  and  affix  a  revenue  stamp  of 
the  value  of  80  copecks.  5.  He  must  obtain  the  authorization  of  the 
director  to  have  his  merchandise  examined  (the  examination  taking 
place  but  twice  daily,  at  10  a.m.,  and  at  I  p.m.),  whereby  he  must  wait 
till  the  Director  arrives.  6.  ^Yhen  the  authorization  has  been  received, 
he  must  get  it  entered  in  the  books  of  the  storehouse.  7.  He  must 
present  the  authorization  to  the  storehouse  board  and  await  the  arrival 
of  the  examiners.  8.  He  goes  along  with  the  examiners  to  the  store- 
house. 9.  He  has  the  goods  examined.  10.  He  signs  a  declaration 
that  he  is  satisfied  with  the  examination.  11.  The  examiners  signed  it. 
12.  All  return  to  the  storehouse  office.  13.  The  duty  on  the  merchan- 
dise is  calculated.  14.  .-Ml  documents  relating  to  the  matter  are  pre- 
sented to  the  controller.  15.  The  duty  is  paid.i  16.  A  receipt  for  the 
duty  is  written  out.  17.  The  receipt  has  to  be  presented  to  the  head 
book-keeper.  18.  A  revenue  stamp  of  80  copecks  has  to  be  purchased 
and  affixed.  19.  A  "  talon  "  has  to  be  obtained.  20.  It  must  be  handed 
to  the  customs'  guard.  21.  The  bill  of  expenses  of  the  Customs'  Work- 
ingmen's  Association  is  made  out  and  handed  to  the  consignee.  22. 
He  receives  a  customs'  ticket  authorizing  him  to  leave  the  Custom 
House  precincts.  23.  I  le  must  see  that  his  cases  are  properly  repacked; 
and  24.  He  has  to  hand  in  his  ticket  to  the  guard."  - 

The  Novoye  Vremya,  from  which  I  have  translated  this 
list  of  formalities  without  changing  a  word,  tells  us  that  one 
gentleman  accomplished  all  this  in  four  hours  —  a  compar- 
atively short  time  —  for  formalities  that  some  people  spend 
three  days  in  wading  through. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  of  anything  so  truly  char- 
acteristic of  Russian  notions  of  the  value  of  time  as  the  keen 
competition  that  goes  on  in  many  parts  of  the  empire  be- 
tween peasant  carriers  with  their  oxen  or  horses,  and  rail- 
way companies  with  their  steam  engines.  Some  time  ago 
one  company  formally  besought  the  Government  to  protect 

1  This  is  no  mere  formality  of  the  citius  dicto  kind:  one  has  often  to  wait 
twenty  minutes  or  half  an  hour  before  the  cashier  finds  it  convenient  to 
accept  one's  money. 

2  Novoye  Vremya,  24lh  August,  1888.  This  journal  has  made  one  impor- 
tant omission  in  drawing  up  its  list.  One  must  set  out  by  obtaining  from 
the  police  a  certificate  that  he  who  presents  himself  is  really  the  person  he 
claims  to  be. 


SLOTH.  53 

their  threatened  interests  by  forbidding  private  enterprise  to 
compete,  as  otherwise  "  they  would  lose  the  goods  traffic  " 
and  become  bankrupts.^  In  the  year  1889  a  firm  of  print- 
ers of  the  city  of  Yekaterinoslav  ordered  a  large  quantity  of 
paper  of  the  value  of  1,700  roubles,  which  they  had  pur- 
chased in  Kharkoif,  to  be  conveyed  to  them  in  Yekaterin- 
oslav (2 So  Russian  versts)  on  floats  drawn  by  horses,  this 
being  a  much  less  expensive  and  generally  more  satisfactory 
way  than  getting  it  sent  by  rail.-  In  the  Baltic  Provinces 
the  same  phenomenon  is  frequent,  and  it  is  said  to  be  yearly 
growing  more  so.^  Between  Riga  and  Valk,  for  instance, 
which  are  joined  by  rail,  much  of  the  carrying  trade  is  done 
by  private  individuals,  who  convey  the  merchandise  on  floats 
and  drays  drawn  by  horses.*  And  so  lively  has  this  compe- 
tition become  in  the  South  of  Russia  that  some  railway  com- 
panies are,  if  we  can  believe  the  local  press,  actually  being 
worsted  in  the  struggle.^ 

And  the  weightiest  interests,  the  most  sacred  considera- 
tions, go  for  nothing  in  comparison  with  the  inherent  right 
of  the  Russian  to  indulge  in  this  demoralizing  sloth.  As  soon 
would  the  inexorable  order  of  Carthusian  monks  give  a  mor- 
sel of  meat  to  its  most  valuable  member  —  though  the  effect 
were  to  restore  his  ebbing  life  —  as  a  Russian  department 
would  hasten  by  a  single  day  the  delivery  of  a  document  to 
hinder  the  ruin  or  death  of  scores  of  human  beings.  About 
two  years  ago  I  read  a  most  harrowing  account  in  the  Rus- 
sian papers  of  the  fate  of  a  family  bitten  by  a  mad  wolf.  M. 
Pasteur,  on  being  informed  of  it,  asked  that  they  be  sent  to 
Paris  at  once,  and  on  learning  that  they  were  poverty-stricken 
peasants,  he  generously  undertook  to  pay  their  expenses 
himself.  The  offer  was  thankfully  accepted,  and  he  was  in- 
formed that  as  soon  as  they  received  their  passports  they 
would  start.  In  ten  days  or  a  fortnight  afterwards  he  was 
told  that  they  had  been  seized  with  the  usual  paroxysms  and 
died.  The  authorities,  it  should  be  stated,  did  not  refuse 
to  deliver  passports  to  these  unfortunate  sufferers,  nor  pur- 
posely throw  difficulties  in  their  way,  they  only  objected  to 
draw  them  up  with  extra  dispatch,  and  forego  any  of  the 
usual  formalities.  Ultimately,  indeed,  they  forwarded  pass- 
ports for  them  all,  but  it  was,  I  believe,  some  days  after  their 


1  The  Basuntchak  Railway.  ^  ^^ovoye  Vremya,  Sept.  13th,  1889. 

8  Ibid.  ■■  Ibid^ 

6  Odessa  Messenger,  Dec.  i,  1888. 


54  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

funeral.'  And  thus  clay  after  clay,  year  after  year,  the  same 
fatal  lesson  of  waste  of  time  ancl  neglect  of  opportunity  is 
inculcated  upon  the  people,  whose  life  might  appropriately 
be  summed  up  in  their  own  proverbial  phrases  as  "  a  sitting 
by  the  seashore  waiting  for  the  weather,"  or  more  happily 
still  in  the  slightly  modified  line  of  Horace  — 
"  Russicus  expectat  dum  defluat  amnis." 

It  is  curious  to  watch  the  working  of  this  subtle  spirit  of  in- 
tellectual and  moral  sluggishness  upon  foreigners,  at  first  slow 
and  imperceptible  like  the  symptoms  of  physical  drowsiness, 
and  ever  more  rapid  and  irresistible  as  the  end  approaches. 
A  foreigner  in  Russia  may,  if  he  strive  strenuously,  keep  much 
of  his  moral  code  intact ;  he  may  make  a  stand  for  his  reli- 
gious creed,  if  he  have  one,  but  his  enterprise  will  insensibly 
slumber,  his  energy  evaporate,  and  he  will  thereafter  go  about 
his  business  like  one  working  against  time,  who  is  in  no  hurry 
to  be  done.  And  with  all  this  there  is  no  disagreeable  struggle, 
no  feeling  of  dissatisfaction,  rather  a  sensation  of  pleasure. 
It  is  difficult,  not  to  say  impossible,  to  make  it  clear  to  those 
who  have  not  lived  long  in  the  country  in  what  this  secret 
charm  of  Russian  life  consists,  for  however  prejudiced  one 
may  be  against  the  government  or  the  officials,  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  some  mysterious  spell  fascinates  all  foreigners 
who  have  spent  some  years  in  the  country,  causing  many 
who  have  shaken  its  dust  off  their  feet,  apparently  for  all 
time,  to  return  and  settle  there  for  life.  I  have  known  en- 
terprising young  Englishmen,  brisk  Americans,  plodding 
Germans,  and  mercurial  Frenchmen,  who  came  to  Russia 
brimful  of  life  and  exuberant  energies,  resolved  to  do  great 
things,  to  plough  deep  historical  furrows  each  in  his  own  re- 
spective field.  And  when  a  few  years  had  passed  away, 
I  noticed  with  surprise  what  a  vast  change  had  come  over 
most  of  them  ;  their  vivacity  and  buoyancy  had  gone  out 
from  them  ;  their  vast  plans  had  dwindled  down  to  the  mean 
dimensions  of  journeymen's  tasks  ;  lethargic  torpor  clouded 
their  faculties  and  paralyzed  their  will,  leaving  them  for  most 
practical  purposes  as  soulless  as  the  monster  created  by 
I'Vankenstein. 


1  I  ought  to  say  that  I  am  narrating  this  story  without  sources  or  notes 
before  me.  I  may  have  made  some  erroneous  statements  in  telling  it,  but 
if  so,  they  only  affect  matters  of  detail.  1  know  that  the  newspapers  at  the 
time  stated  plainly  that  the  lives  of  these  poor  peasants  had  been  uselessly 
sacrificed  to  pedantic  fidelity  to  the  formalities  of  the  passport  system  — and 
more  than  this  I  do  not  wisfi  to  convey. 


SLOTH.  55 

Pity,  and  not  blame  or  contempt,  is  the  feeling  evoked  by 
a  knowledge  of  the  true  causes  of  that  helpless  shifriessness, 
bordering  on  hebetude,  which  so  terribly  handicaps  Russians 
in  their  competition  with  foreigners ;  for  they  are  scarcely 
more  responsible  for  their  helplessness  than  is  a  butterfly  for 
the  color  of  its  wings.  Well-bred  boys  and  girls  in  this 
country  and  the  United  States  are  expected  to  do  for  them- 
selves most  of  the  things  which  in  Russia  the  Government 
alone  is  qualified  to  perform  for  men  and  women.  Indeed, 
the  Government  may  be  truly  described  as  the  one  efficient 
cause  of  everything  done  or  omitted,  the  people  playing  the 
role  of  Malebranche's  "occasional  causes,"  and  remaining 
quite  passive.  Thus,  to  begin  at  the  beginning,  parents  are 
not  allowed  to  exercise  their  judgment  or  discharge  their 
duty  in  the  matter  of  their  children's  education.  If,  for  ex- 
ample, they  desire  to  give  them  a  classical  education,  it  is 
not  enough  that  they  have  the  means  to  pay  for  it,  that  their 
children  possess  the  faculties  to  assimilate  it,  and  that  the 
schools  have  numerous  vacancies.  Besides  all  this,  a  petition 
must  be  drawn  up  containing  a  concise  but  complete  biogra- 
phy of  the  parents,  children,  every  member  of  the  family,  and 
every  other  person  living  with  the  family.^  Moreover,  the  father 
must  state  whether  he  himself  has  enjoyed  the  liberal  educa- 
tion which  he  craves  for  his  son  ;  and  if  not,  there  is  an  end 
of  the  matter.^  Lastly,  he  must  set  forth  in  detail  his  profes- 
sion, his  yearly  income,  the  number  of  rooms  in  his  flat,  the 
number  of  servants  he  keeps,  and  the  profession  for  which 
he  destines  his  son.^  Unless  the  father  is  a  man  of  means 
of  the  upper  class  of  society,  and  of  education,  his  children 
are  deemed  unworthy  of  being  initiated  into  the  mysteries 
of  Greek  and  Latin,  the  study  of  which  is  looked  upon  as  a 
sort  of  educational  sacrament.  But  even  if  the  ambitious 
father  satisfies  the  Governmental  demands  under  all  these 
heads,  he  has  still  no  better  guarantee  of  success  than  before. 
Four  hundred  parents  were  in  that  condition  a  few  weeks 
ago  :  their  children  were  officially  recognized  as  qualified, 
they  were  examined  and  passed  successfully,  and  were  then 
told  that  they  could  not  be  received,  and  they  must  now 
dispense  with  intermediate  education,  as  this  year  at  least 
no  other  establishments  can  receive  them."' 


1  Cf.  Circular  of  the  Curator   of  the  Odessa  University,  explaining  the 

Ministerial  Circular  of  the  30th  of  June,  1887,  No.  9255.  -  Ibid. 

3  Ibtd.  •*  Novoye  Vremya,  30th  August,  1889. 


56  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

» 

The  difficulties  in  the  way  of  choosing  a  profession  for 
one's  son  are  equally  numerous  and  to  the  full  as  serious ; 
for  admission  to  the  technical  schools  and  to  the  universities 
is  now  become  as  difficult  for  a  Russian  without  influential 
friends  as  admission  to  Mecca  for  an  unregenerate  Christian. 
The  circumstance  that  the  parents  are  forbidden  to  give 
their  children  the  religious  education  which  they  hold  to  be 
the  best  seems  almost  reasonable  and  proper  when  viewed 
in  the  light  of  so  many  other  galling  and  fatuous  restrictions 
which  hamper  one  to  the  bitter  end.  If  you  are  an  historian, 
the  law  directs  your  attention  to  various  periods  of  history 
which  you  are  invited  to  pass  over  in  silence,  to  others 
which  you  must  touch  upon  with  painful  circumspection, 
plentifully  diluting  the  results  of  your  studies  with  loyal 
fiction  when  setting  them  before  the  public  even  in  one  of 
those  Cyclopean  volumes  which  seem  written  for  men  with 
the  lives  of  the  Patriarchs  before  them.  I  have  the  author- 
ity of  the  late  Censor  General,  Privy  Councillor  Grigoriefif, 
for  asserting  that  it  is  forbidden  to  publish  in  the  newspapers 
or  in  popular  books  a  list  of  Russian  Emperors,  with  the 
years  of  thei?-  reign,  ixoxa.  Peter  the  Great  to  Alexander  II., 
because  some  of  them  having  reigned  a  very  short  time  the 
natural  inference  would  be  that  they  were  the  victims  of 
violence.^ 

If  a  playwright,  you  have  equal,  perhaps  greater  difficul- 
ties to  contend  with.  For  here  too  the  police  step  in, 
placing  impediments  in  your  "  fancy's  course,"  which  are 
not  "  motives  of  mere  fancy,"  and  saying  "  Hitherto  shalt 
thou  come,  but  no  further."  Last  season,  for  the  first  time 
in  history,  a  special  permission  was  accorded  to  a  playwright, 
M.  Kryloff,  to  have  a  drama  represented  in  which  the 
Regent  Sophia  ^  plays  a  part,  the  unvarying  rule  being  that 

1  The  editors  of  the  chief  historical  reviews,  MM.  Semeffsky  [of  the  Rus- 
sian Post]  and  Shubinsky  \_tIistorical  Messenger]  have  lately  been  made  to 
feel,  more  frequently  and  more  keenly,  perhaps,  than  even  editors  of 
political  journals,  the  heavy  hand,  or  rather  the  hob-nailed  boot,  of  a  pater- 
nal government.  It  is  a  far  more  heroic  work  to  edit  even  an  historical 
review  in  Russia  than  foreigners  imagine.  Most  Englishmen  with  a  normal 
allowance  of  sensibility  and  amour  propre,  and  no  more  than  average  en- 
durance, physical  and  moral,  would  cheerfully  take  to  breaking  stones  by 
the  roadside  or  to  earning  their  bread  as  dockyard  laborers  rather  than 
edit  a  Russian  journal  or  review  —  even  historical  —  for  long.  Some  of 
the  most  erudite  and  conscientious  historians  of  modern  Russia  have  been 
wantonly  insulted  to  their  faces  by  foolish  officials,  and  vilified  in  terms  of 
abuse  which  it  would  be  impossible,  even  in  thisoufspoken  age  of  realism, 
to  drag  from  the  "  decent  obscurity  of  a  foreign  tongue." 

'^  Sophia  was  the  sister  of  Peter  the  Great,  and  regent  during  his  minor- 


SLOTH.  57 

no  member  of  the  reigning  house,  however  long  ago  he  or 
she  may  have  been  consigned  to  obUvion,  can  be  introduced 
into  a  dramatic  piece  in  Russia.  Every  play,  tragedy, 
comedy,  or  farce,  must  be  carefully  read  in  manuscript  by 
special  censors,  who,  if  they  have  nothing  to  object  to  them- 
selves, pass  it  on  to  whatever  other  departments  seem 
directly  interested  —  as  the  ecclesiastical,  for  example  — 
and  even  these  repeated  authorizations  by  no  means  guar- 
antee that  it  will  ultimately  reach  the  stage.  Last  season  a 
play  that  had  passed  unscathed  through  all  these  prolonged 
ordeals,  and  was  at  last  represented  —  the  Emperor  being 
present  on  the  first  night  —  was  ordered  to  be  withdrawn 
the  next  day  and  never  to  be  given  again. ^ 

A  genuine  poet's  career  is  in  truth  a  dim  and  perilous 
way,  leading  at  times  to  disgrace,  imprisonment,  Siberia,  as 
Puschkin,^  Lermontoff,"  Shevtschenko,^  and  others  discov- 
ered to.  their  cost ;  and  the  patriotic  writers  who  have 
poured  out  the  vials  of  their  wrath  on  the  unappreciative 
generation  that  made  Burns  an  exciseman  would  have  been 
astounded  to  learn  under  what  unfavorable  conditions  Rus- 
sian poetry  has  to  thrive  and  flourish.  A  poet  who  is 
arrested  for  a  few  perfectly  harmless  lines,  packed  off  to  the 
borders  of  Asiatic  Russia,  condemned  to  serve  there  ten 
years  as  a  common  soldier,^  strictly  forbidden  to  write  a  line 
of  poetry,  and  reduced  to  composing  stray  verses,  which, 
with  the  fear  of  the  knout  before  his  eyes,  he  furtively  writes 
in  a  little  copy-book  that  he  always  carries  in  his  boot-leg 
for  fear  of  detection  '^  —  such  a  man  might  well  be  looked  at 
and  pointed  out,  like  Dante,  as  a  man  who  had  been  down 
f/ie/r,  had  he  not  such  a  formidable  number  of  colleagues. 
And  what  could  indicate  more  clearly,  more  terribly,  the 
depth  to  which  the  iron  had  entered  into  his  soul  than  the 
fact  that  when  this  gifted  and  kindly  bard  heard  the  sen- 


ity.  In  1689  he  deprived  her  of  all  share  in  the  government,  and  imprisoned 
her  in  a  monastery  where  she  soon  died. 

1  It  was  an  Opera  called  the  Me}xliant  Kalaschnikoff,  the  music  being 
by  Rubinstein. 

-  The  Government  resolved  to  banish  Puschkin  to  the  Solovki  Isles  on 
the  White  Sea,  and  his  friend  Karamzin  had  extreme  difficulty  to  get  him 
banished  to  less  distant  or  less  bleak  regions.  He  was  at  one  time  banished 
to  Bessarabia,  Odessa,  Yekaterinoslav,  Pskoff. 

3  Cf.  Polevoi,  Hist,  of  Russian  Literature,  604,  where  the  most  important 
part  of  Lermontoff's  life  is  represented  by  numerous  full  stops  —  the  censure 
not  allowing  anything  more  explicit. 

4  Cf.  Sketches  of  the  History  of  the  Literature  of  Ukraine,  Petroff,  1884 
(in  Russian),  pp.  279-368.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  324.  *<  Ibid.,  p.  323. 


53  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

tence  pronounced  he  humbly  declared   himself  worthy  of 
that  punishment,   and  paid   a  tribute    to   the   even-handed 
justice  of  the  Tsar  ?  ' 

A  literary  man's  life  in  Russia  is  often  incomparably  worse 
than  was  that  of  an  English  bookseller's  hack  in  the  days  of 
Samuel  Johnson.  Like  Noah's  contemporaries  overtaken 
by  the  Deluge,  he  has  to  contend  against  the  waters  of 
tribulation  from  above  and  below ;  he  must  steer  between 
the  Scylla  of  poverty  and  the  Chary bdis  of  imprisonment 
and  persecution,  and  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  keej)  clear  of 
the  one  without  falling  into  the  other.  The  fate  and  physi- 
ognomy of  everything  he  writes  is  absolutely  dependent 
upon  men  who  are  no  better  fitted  to  sit  in  judgment  upon 
works  of  literature  and  art  than  is  a  man  born  blind  to  lec- 
ture upon  perspective.  The  humiliations,  the  disappoint- 
ments," the  loss  of  enterprise  and  health,  the  long  mental 
agony  that  have  to  be  endured  before  a  few  genuine  poems 
or  a  volume  of  honest  critical  or  historical  essays  can  be  set 
before  the  public,  compel  us  to  look  upon  such  books  with 
veneration  and 

"  Ca'  them  lives  o'  men." 

The  history  of  Russian  literature  is  a  martyrology. 

But  it  is  not  necessary  to  be  a  literary  man,  a  poet,  or  an 
historian,  to  come  in  unpleasant  contact  with  the  watchful 
meddling  authorities  who  insist  on  supplying  you  with  cut- 
and-dried  thoughts,  controlling  your  words  and  regulating 
your  actions  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave.  Not  only  can 
you  not  change  your  church  to  suit  your  altered  religious 
belief,  but  you  are  actually  compelled,  whether  you  are  a 
Dissenter  or  an  Atheist  at  heart,  to  confess  your  sins  and 
receive  a  sacrament  once  a  year,  and  to  have  the  fact  regis- 
tered on  the  books  of  the  Church.^  If  you  prefer  philan- 
thropy to  theology  and  wish  to  found  a  school,  endow  an 
orphanage,  erect  a  widow's  asylum,  or  present  a  library  to 
the  public,  you  must  first  ask  the  permission  of  the  Govern- 
ment, which  is  often  refused  and  never  obtained  until  you 
have  surmounted  as  many  obstacles  as  the  liaron  of  Trier- 


1  Cf.  Sketches  of  the  History  of  the  Literature  of  Ukraine,  Petroff,  1884 
(in  Russian),  p.  320. 

■■2  Take  this  as  a  sample:  "The  difficulties  (connected  with  the  Censure) 
which  M.  Matchtet  had  to  surmount  in  printing  liis  tale  (  The  Prodii;al  Son) 
which  compelled  him  to  recast  the  larger  half  of  the  first  part,  are  intensified 
now  tliat  he  is  about  to  print  the  second  half."  —  Odessa  News,  July  29,  1887. 

8  Russ.  Crim,  Code,  ^  208. 


SLOTH.  59 

main  in  seeking  for  Gyneth,  and  tlie  springs  of  action  are 
sometimes  dried  up  before  you  are  in  sight  of  the  goal.  If 
you  retire  to  the  obscurity  of  private  hfe  with  the  hope  of 
indulging  in  the  pleasures  of  reading,  the  Government  is 
waiting  for  you  there,  and  will  not  allow  you  to  peruse  a 
single  printed  line  in  Russian  or  in  a  foreign  tongue  until 
some  official,  probably  infinitely  inferior  to  yourself  in  edu- 
cation, judgment,  and  morality,  has  decided  whether  it  is  fit 
and  proper  that  you  should  read  it.^  If  you  are  tempted  to 
pass  your  leisure  hours  in  teaching  poor  children  to  read 
and  write,  who  would  otherwise  never  have  learned,  you 
have  broken  a  law  which  is  no  dead  letter,  and  are  liable  to 
be  punished  severely.  If  you  invite  some  friends  to  your 
house  to  spend  a  few  hours  every  week  in  reading  and  dis- 
cussing literary  works  —  if  you  formed  a  Russian  Browning 
Society,  for  instance  —  you  have  broken  the  law  and  are 
liable  to  prosecution  and  punishment ;  nay,  if  you  carry  out 
the  command  of  the  Founder  of  Christianity  and  call  to- 
gether your  own  servants  to  read  to  them  the  Gospel,  you 
will  be  treated  as  a  malefactor  or  a  felon.'  If  you  wish  to 
visit  the  theatre  and  see  one  of  the  best  plays  of  the  season, 
you  cannot  dispense  with  the  services  of  an  intermediary  : 
you  must  first  sit  down  and  indite  a  petition  to  the  Theatre 
Board,  setting  forth  your  desire,  stating  the  day  you  would 
like  to  go,  the  seat  you  would  like  to  engage  and  enclosing 
a  stamp  for  a  reply,''  after  which  you  again  relapse  into  your 
normal  state  of  expectancy.  You  may  in  time  receive  a 
reply  briefly  informing  you  that  there  are  no  places  vacant, 
and  leaving  you  to  find,  when  it  is  too  late,  that  there  are 
many ;  or  you  may  not  be  vouchsafed  any  answer  whatever 
until  you  personally  apply  for  one.  When  you  do  get  inside 
the  theatre,  if  it  is  in  the  provinces,  the  authorities,  who  are 
unceasing  in  their  solicitude  for  you  and  yours,  lay  down 
rules  for  your  conduct  which  any  one  but  a  Russian  would 
resent  as  insulting.  In  Pereyasslav,  on  the  ist  August,  1889, 
a  play  was  given  by  the  Little  Russian  Dramatic  Company, 

1  Cf.  Censure  Laws,  ^S^S  187,  182,  and passint. 

2  Even  University  professors,  like  the  late  O.  Miller,  have  been  forbidden 
to  read  privately  in  their  houses  with  their  students,  no  matter  how  harm- 
less or  praiseworthy  the  object  in  view  might  be.  For  the  crime  of  reading 
the  Gospel  to  their  servants,  Colonel  Paschkoff  and  Count  Korff  are  exiled, 
just  as  if  they  had  offended  like  Prince  Krapotkin  or  Stepniak. 

3  It  should  be  stated  that  all  the  theatres  are  not  provided  with  this 
Bureau,  and  tickets  can  be  had  in  the  others  in  the  same  way  as  in  France  or 
England. 


60  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

of  which  M.  Sokoloff  is  the  Director.  The  theatre  bills 
printed  and  published  on  the  occasion  contain  the  following 
l^aternal  admonition  :  "  In  virtue  of  articles  152  and  153  the 
District  Police  Superintendent  requests  the  public  not  to  be 
noisy ;  to  refrain  from  talking  in  a  loud  tone  of  voice,  and 
not  to  interrupt  or  hinder  the  conclusion  of  the  piece. 
Disputes,  wranghng,  and  free  fights  should  be  avoided."^ 
You  sometimes  cannot  obtain  even  medicine  for  your  chil- 
dren without  petitioning  the  Government,  and  even  then 
your  request  may  be  coldly  refused.  I  know  a  gentleman 
who  even  exerted  himself  for  weeks  to  obtain  permission  to 
order  some  bottles  of  Bromure  de  Potassium  de  Henri  Mure, 
a  medicine  strongly  recommended  to  his  child  by  one  of 
the  first  physicians  of  Paris  —  and  all  to  no  purpose.  Kit 
would  have  saved  the  child's  life  she  would  have  had  to  die 
or  else  leave  the  country,  and  this  not  because  the  medicine 
is  alleged  to  be  hurtful  or  even  useless,  but  because  the 
Medical  Council  think  it  superfluous.  You  cannot  enter  or 
leave  a  city  or  town  in  the  Empire  without  reporting  your- 
self to  the  police  like  a  ticket-of-leave  man ;  -  you  are  for- 
bidden to  extend  the  hospitality  of  your  roof  to  your  friend 
or  neighbor  for  a  single  night  without  first  informing  the 
police  of  your  intentions  and  sending  them  your  guest's 
passport;^  whether  you  are  a  Russian  or  a  foreigner  you 
can  no  more  spend  a  night  in  an  hotel  or  change  your 
lodgings  even  for  twenty-four  hours  without  communicating 
with  the  police  and  sending  them  your  passport,  than  you 
can  bespeak  rooms  in  the  Winter  Palace.*  Nay,  whether  you 
are  a  Russian  subject  or  a  foreigner  you  cannot  possibly 
subsist  a  week  without  a  passport,  which  is  such  an  essential 
part  of  your  being  that  Russian  lawyers  have  not  inappropri- 
ately defined  a  man  as  an  animal  composed  of  three  parts  — 
a  body,  a  soul,  and  a  passport.  This  passport  you  must 
have  renewed  once  a  year,  unless  you  are  a  noble  or  an 
honorary  citizen,  and  the  process  is  as  tedious  and  painful 
as  moulting  is  to  birds.  A  voluminous  correspondence,  and 
a  pile  of  documents  with  copies,  petitions,  and  fifteen  sup- 
plements, was  the  result  of  the  attempt  of  a  man  named 
Dudinsky  in  the   Government  of  Smolensk,  to  renew  his 


1  Graschdanin,  2nd  September,  1889, 

2  Cf.,  for  instance,  Art.  61  of  the  Penal  Code  for  Magistrates. 

3  Ibid.  Art.  59.     Cf.  also  Penal  Code,  yji  958. 

■*  Ibid.     The  only  exception  in  practice  is  in  favor  of  liouscs  of  ill-fame. 


SLOTH.  6 1 

passport  two  years  ago.  And  yet  his  papers  were  in  order, 
his  conduct  irreproachable,  and  his  right  to  have  his  pass- 
port renewed  was  not  even  called  in  question.^  These 
obstacles  and  irritations  make  one's  soul  weary  of  life  ;  and 
explain  why  it  is  that  in  the  course  of  one  year  in  St.  Peters- 
burg alone  14,799  persons  were  arrested  and  imprisoned  for 
not  having  complied  with  the  passport  laws.  Many  of  these 
wretched  creatures  may  be  now  on  their  way  to  Siberia.- 

Whatever  you  do  yourself,  whatever  others  do  to  you,  the 
accidents  you  meet  with,  and  ''  visitation  of  God,"  are  all 
valid  motives  for  the  interference  of  the  police,  who  take 
cognizance  of  everything,  and  direct  you  how  to  demean 
yourself  under  the  rapidly  changing  conditions  of  life.  They 
come  into  your  home  and  look  after  the  morality  of  your 
children,  keeping  a  watchful  eye  the  while  on  your  own 
occupations  and  those  of  your  friends ;  they  dog  your  steps 
in  the  streets,  open  your  letters,  cross-examine  your  hall 
porter  who  is  ex  officio  one  of  the  eyes  of  autocracy ;  and 
their  constant  meddling  in  your  private  life  is  almost  as 
maddening  as  the  noise  of  the  Chinese  drums  to  the  wretch 
condemned  to  die  of  want  of  sleep.  Last  year  the  Police 
Prefect  of  Petropavloffsk  actually  forbade  all  the  inhabitants 
of  his  district  to  leave  their  houses  after  ten  o'clock  p.m., 
not  on  political  grounds,  real  or  alleged,  but  simply  in  the 
interests  of  what  he  considered  propriety.^  Some  few  years 
ago  three  or  four  young  ladies  were  upset  in  a  boat  when 
crossing  the  Neva.  The  current  being  pretty  strong  there,* 
there  was  some  difficulty  in  rescuing  them,  and  when  they 
were  taken  out  of  the  water,  it  took  nearly  ten  minutes  to 
row  them  ashore.  The  weather  was  bitterly  cold,  and  the 
ladies  were  shivering  when  they  landed.  Here,  however,  in- 
stead of  being  allowed  to  drive  home  as  quickly  as  they 
could  and  change  their  clothes,  they  were  compelled  to  walk 
to  the  station,  where  a  detailed  account  of  the  accident 
(called  protocoll)  was  drawn  up  and  carefully  read  over  to 
them,  and  it  was  only  when  they  had  signed  this  that  they 
were  at  liberty  to  go.  One  of  them  was  ill  for  six  weeks 
afterwards.'^ 


1  Cf.  St.  Petersburg  Gazette,  29th  August,  1887. 

2  New  Review,  July,  1888. 

3  Opposite  the  Gagarin  Quay  at  the  Vyborg  side. 

■1  The  press  mentioned  it  at  the  time,  but  I  am  narrating  from  memory. 
I  spoke  to  one  of  the  young  ladies  at  the  time. 
5  Novoye  Vremya,  28th  August,  1889. 


62  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

It  almost  requires  the  credulity  of  an  Orgon  —  rare  in 
England  —  to  believe  that  the  law  of  the  Russian  Empire 
solemnly  lays  down  the  rules  of  spelling  to  be  followed  in 
writing  or  in  giving  citations  from  the  Little  Russian  lan- 
guage, and  very  strictly  enforces  the  decree  !  Yet  it  is  per- 
fectly true,  though  it  is  one  of  those  truths  which  are  stranger 
than  fiction,  as  men  like  P.  Kulisch,  Professor  Antonovitch, 
Krapovnitsky,  the  playwright,  and  many  other  contemporary 
litterateurs  have  learned  to  their  cost.  I  possess,  however, 
the  text  of  the  law  in  question,  the  second  paragraph  of 
which  is  as  follows  :  "  Are  forbidden  in  the  precincts  of  the 
Empire  original  works  and  translations  in  Little  Russian, 
except  (<?)  historical  documents,  {F)  literary  productions, 
on  condition  that  they  keep  to  the  orthography  of  the  orig- 
inals, and  tliat  there  be  no  deviations  from  the  cotnmonfy 
accepted  Russian  svstem  of  spellinc,  and  that  the  authoriza- 
tion be  accorded  only  after  the  manuscript  has  been  ex- 
amined." Signed,  Grigorieff,  Director  of  the  Central  Board 
of  Censure.  18/30  May,  1876.  Now  it  is  proposed  to  for- 
bid in  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  Russian  Empire  the 
printing  of  works  in  the  Polish  tongue,  unless  they  are  writ- 
ten with  Russian,  instead  of  Latin,  letters ;  and  according 
to  the  laws  now  rigidly  enforced,  no  tradesman  can  print  an 
advertisement  or  handbill  without  receiving  the  authorization 
of  the  police. 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at,  under  the  circumstances,  that 
the  Government  has  become  in  the  eyes  of  the  people  a 
fetish,  to  be  conciliated,  feared,  obeyed  —  the  embodiment 
of  omniscience  and  omnipotence,  whose  word  is  law  to 
nature  as  well  as  to  man.  Hence  they  come  to  the  authori- 
ties in  all  the  difficulties  of  hfe,  asking  for  spiritual  bread, 
and  invariably  receiving  a  stone.  If  an  earthquake  is 
feared,  a  war  expected,  an  inundation  apprehended,  they 
hasten  to  the  nearest  representative  of  power  for  instruc- 
tions how  to  receive  the  impending  calamity.  Four  years 
ago,  for  instance,  when  the  Russian  press  predicted  a  de- 
structive storm  in  certain  parts  of  the  country,  the  like  of 
which  for  violence  had  never  yet  been  experienced,  the 
police  stations  were  crowded  with  men  and  women  anxious 
to  learn  the  why  and  the  wherefore.  Here  is  a  specimen  of 
what  daily  took  place  at  that  time,  which  I  literally  translate 
from  a  local  organ  of  the  press.  "  May  I  make  so  free  as 
to  ask  your  honor,"  says  a  peasant  who  has  come  afar  ad 
hoc,  "when  this  here  storm  is  to  burst?"     "What  storm 


SLOTH.  63 

• 

are  you  talking  about?  Get  away  from  here  and  don't 
bother."  "  Three  days  ago,  your  honor,  our  Nick  Safronitch 
came  home  from  town  and  told  us  that  the  papers  printed 
all  about  this  same  storm.  I  don't  believe  it  myself,  but  my 
wife  says,  '  Go,'  she  yells,  '  and  ask  the  authorities  —  the 
police,  that  is,  for  they  know  everything,  because  they  know 
the  high  authorities  and  the  regulation  of  things'  —  and  the 
neighbors  all  over  the  place  are  talking  about  it  too."  "Get 
away  with  your  storm ;  go  to  your  wife  and  neighbors,  and 
say  that  the  authorities  have  not  sent  us  any  orders  yet  con- 
cerning the  storm.  We  know  nothing  about  it."  "  All 
right,  your  honor.  I'll  tell  my  wife  and  neighbors  that 
there  is  no  ukase  about  the  storm  in  Odessa ;  that  it  must 
be  untrue."  ^  So  strong  is  this  feehng  of  abject  helplessness 
on  the  part  of  the  people,  so  incapable  are  they  of  walking 
even  to  destruction  without  being  led  thither  by  the  hand, 
that  thieves  and  pickpockets  cannot  always  pursue  their  call- 
ing to  their  satisfaction  without  appealing  for  the  "  moral  " 
support  and  guidance  of  the  police.  This  seems  a  paradox  ; 
but  the  annals  of  criminal  justice  for  the  last  twenty-five 
years  yield  a  harvest  of  cases  that  go  far  to  establish  in  such 
matters  the  connivance  and  active  complicity  of  the  police 
and  other  authorities  as  the  rule  rather  than  the  exception. 
As  for  the  common  people,  they  do  not  hesitate  to  ask  the 
authorities  in  whom  they  live,  move,  and  have  their  being, 
for  assistance  in  the  commission  of  crime.  It  is  only  a  few 
years  ago  since  some  peasants  of  the  village  of  Stryscheff, 
district  of  Rybinks,  lacking  the  funds  necessary  to  purchase 
liquor  and  drown  their  cares,  decided  that  the  best  way  to 
raise  the  money  would  be  to  rob  the  country-house  of  a  cer- 
tain Madame  Syroyeschin,  which  was  not  inhabited  at  the 
time.  They  went  to  work  systematically,  broke  open  the 
door,  dragged  out  the  furniture,  mirrors,  etc.,  into  the  ad- 
joining wood,  and  proceeded  to  divide  the  spoils.  But  they 
could  not  satisfactorily  solve  the  problem.  They  disputed, 
quarrelled,  shouted,  fought ;  but  to  no  purpose.  At  last 
they  cooled  down,  and  agreed  to  decide  the  matter  calmly, 
reasonably,  equitably ;  and  went  off  in  a  body  to  the  near- 
est representative  of  law  and  government,  the  starosta,  in 
whom  they  showed  their  confidence  by  requesting  him  to 
divide  the  booty  among  them,  "  according  to  the  dictates  of 
his  conscience.""     The  semi-ofiicial  organ  from  which  this 

1  Odessa  Messenger,  Sept.  18,  1887.  2  Graschdanin,  Aug.  26,  1889. 


64  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

account  is  bodily  taken,  commenting  in  its  following  number 
upon  the  comparative  statistics  of  education,  from  which  it 
appears  that  Holland,  Saxony,  and  England  spend  more 
money  upon  the  education  of  their  subjects,  and  Russia  less, 
than  any  other  European  nation,  jubilantly  exclaims,  "And 
'  glory,  glory  be  to  God  that  it  is  so  ! '  we  cry  out  in  sincerity 
of  heart  and  full  of  love  for  our  native  land.  This  place  of 
honor  in  the  statistics  of  national  education  has  been  pur- 
chased by  Germany  at  the  price  of  the  colossal  development 
of  socialism  and  atheism."  ^ 

No  man,  were  his  faith  in  the  future  of  humanity  never  so 
robust,  can  contemplate  these  things  without  a  feeling  of 
sadness  akin  to  despair ;  for  eighty  or  ninety  millions  ^  of 
human  beings,  with  blunted  fiiculties,  palsied  will,  distorted 
views  of  life,  the  divine  fire  within  them  being  deliberately 
and  diabolically  quenched  and  stamped  out,  are,  in  sober 
truth,  one  of  the  saddest  sights  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
And  the  tragic  effect  of  the  situation  is  heightened,  not 
transformed,  by  the  fatuous  pomposity  and  conceit  with 
which  the  masters  of  these  uncomplaining  serfs,  instead  of 
taking  pity  on  their  helpless  victims,  prate  about  their  lofty 
mission  to  diffuse  light  and  culture  and  political  liberty 
among  the  Slavs  of  Europe  and  the  Mahometans  of  Asia. 
Philanthropic  Mrs.  Jellyby,  neglecting  home  and  children  to 
sweeten  the  lot  of  the  unregenerate  natives  of  J>orrioboola 
Gha,  was  a  paragon  of  good  sense  and  modesty  in  compari- 
son. No  doubt  the  Government  is  and  always  has  been 
composed,  not  of  angels  and  saints  translated  beyond  the 
sphere  of  evil  influence,  but  of  men  with  the  same  nature, 
subject  to  the  same  temptations  as  the  millions  whom  they 
lead.  Moreover,  where  the  reciprocal  action  and  reaction 
of  governors  and  governed  is  so  complex  and  difficult  to 
analyze  as  in  Russia,  it  is  extremely  easy  to  err  on  the  side 
of  exaggeration  in  attempting  to  allot  to  the  authorities  their 
fair  share  of  the  joint  responsil)ility.  lUit  whether  much  or 
little  is  of  no  practical  importance,  seeing  that  it  is  the  mis- 
fortune of  the  masses  to  have  to  pay  dearly  for  the  folly  of 
their  rulers  after  having  fully  expiated  their  own.  It  is 
hard  to  suppress  a  sigh  of  pity  for  a  generous  people  dragged 


1  Graschdanin,  8th  September,  1889. 

2  The  difference  between  this  numbev  and  tlic  total  population  of  Russia 
is  the  large  margin  for  exceptions  which  it  is  wise  to  allow  in  a  country  of 
ten  millions  of  Nonconformists,  many  of  whom  would  bear  comparison 
with  the  choicest  spirits  of  Western  Europe. 


SLOTH,  65 

down  by  those  whom  they  support  in  kixury,  to  the  level  of 
the  beasts  of  the  field  ;  for  men  who  are  serfs  in  everything  but 
the  name,  who  toil  and  moil  from  childhood  to  old  age,  creat- 
ing riches  that  elude  their  grasp,  and  who  can  still  affirm  in 
a  proverb  in  which  is  embedded  the  crystallized  history  of 
ages  :  "■  Our  soul  is  God's,  our  body  the  Tsar's,  and  our  backs 
belong  to  our  masters." 


66  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

DISHONESTY. 


i( 


I  REG  to  tender  my  heartfelt  thanks  to  M.  Rudzky, 
tradesman  of  this  city,  for  having  restored  me  my  watch, 
which  I  inadvertently  left  on  the  counter  in  his  shop  a  few 
days  ago.  When  1  offered  him  money  as  a  token  of  my 
gratitude,  M.  Rudzky  refused  to  accept  it,  saying  that  he 
had  only  done  his  duty.  This  is  an  exami^le  worthy  of  imita- 
tion !  —  Signed,  Madame  Karasteleva."  ^  This  pithy  psean, 
curiously  characteristic  of  the  country,  was  published  in  one 
of  the  principal  papers  of  one  of  the  principal  cities  of  Rus- 
sia about  a  year  ago,  and  must  have  made  ]\I.  Rudzky  feel 
as  if  his  originality  bordered  on  suicidal  mania  or  some 
equally  dangerous  form  of  eccentricity.  Neither  such  spon- 
taneous testimonials,  however,  nor  the  absence  thereof,  are 
needed  to  prove  that  Russia  can  boast  of  numbers  of  ob- 
scure but  upright  men  whose  sterling  honesty  will  bear  com- 
parison with  that  of  the  noblest  characters  described  in 
history  or  besung  in  fable.  It  would  be  indeed  sad  were  it 
otherwise.  No  society,  however  rude,  is  wholly  destitute  of 
these  pioneers  or  survivors  of  a  higher  stage  of  social  life, 
without  which  it  could  no  more  exist  than  falsehood  lacking 
a  grain  of  truth  to  leaven  it.  What  this  outburst  of  gratitude 
really  implied,  and  what  few  foreigners  who  possess  no  spe- 
cial knowledge  of  the  country  would  willingly  take  for 
granted,  even  on  the  word  of  the  most  trusted  ethnologist, 
is  the  great  paucity  of  such  moral  giants  as  Rudzky.  It  is 
estimated  that  there  are  in  Russia  about  thirteen  milUons 
of  Dissenters  all  told,  considerable  numbers  of  whom  be- 
long to  rationalistic  sects  such  as  the  Alolokaiii,  the  Stund- 
ists,  and  others  —  chaste,  veracious,  honest  Puritans,  whose 
theology  is  pure  morality,  and  whose  dealings  with  all  men 
are  regulated  by  the  principles  of  the  strictest  justice.     P>ut 

1  The  first  sentence  is  quoted  from  memory ;  the  others  are  taken  from 
the  Novoye  Vremya  of  the  30th  August,  1889.  The  paragraph  appeared 
in  the  New  Russian  Tek^taph  (Odessa)  about  the  25th  of  that  month. 


DISHONESTY.  6/ 

the  sectarians  scarcely  amount  to  the  eighth  of  the  entire 
population,  and  the  rationalistic  sects  are  but  a  fraction  of 
the  sectarians.  The  great  bulk  of  the  Russian  nation  not 
only  does  not  associate  dishonesty  with  criminality,  sinful- 
ness, or  ethical  deformity,  but  holds  it  to  be  rather  a  merito- 
rious employment  of  heaven-sent  gifts  -which  it  would  be 
sinful  to  let  rust  for  want  of  exercise.  At  the  root  of  all  the 
dealings  of  the  people  among  themselves,  and  of  all  the 
commercial  relations  of  the  nation  with  foreigners,  like 
the  serpent  gnawing  at  the  root  of  the  tree  Yggdrasil,  lies 
ineffable  contempt  of  the  practice  of  common  honesty, 
which  is  held  equivalent  to  hiding  in  the  earth  those  talents 
of  worldly  wisdom  which  it  should  be  man's  first  object  to 
increase,  reaping  where  he  sowed  not,  and  gathering  where 
he  has  not  strewed.  And  it  is  upon  this  view  that  they  shape 
the  conduct  of  their  lives  with  all  the  persistency  of  which  a 
feeble-minded,  fickle,  nerveless  people  are  capable. 

It  would  be  a  mistake  to  call  this  degeneration.  It  is 
merely  stagnation,  arrested  development ;  for  the  Russia  of 
to-day,  when  stripped  of  the  outward  hull,  which  is  varnished 
and  modern,  will  be  found  to  differ  in  no  essential  respects 
from  the  Russia  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  German  Hanse- 
atic  cities,  which  strictly  forbade  their  merchants  to  give 
Russians  goods  on  credit,  to  lend  them  money  ^  under  any 
pretexts,  or  even  to  borrow  of  them,  under  pain  of  speedy 
punishment,"  are  now  mere  memories  of  the  past.  Reval, 
which  was  equally  careful  about  guarding  itself  from  the 
consequences  of  dishonesty,  has  lived  to  become  a  flourish- 
ing city  of  the  Russian  empire.  But  the  characteristic  traits 
of  the  people  are  still  what  they  were ;  and  the  frequent 
complaints  of  the  Germans  and  Belgians  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  that  Russian  traders  put  lying  brands  and  false 
trade-marks  on  their  goods  ;  that  light  weight  went  hand- 
in-hand  with  bad  quality,  heavy  bricks  being  freely  added  to 
consignments  of  adulterated  wax ;  ^  that  sham  furs  were  so 


1  Liev.  EJut.  ujid  Kurldndisches  Urkundenbuch  nebst  Reglstern  ;  Reval, 
1852-1864.     II.,  576,  583. 

2  Urkiindliche  Geschichte  des  Ursprunges  d.  deiitschen  'Hanse;  Ham- 
burg, 1830.  II.,  N.  ix.,  p.  27.  It  would  be  wrong  to  imagine  that  the  Rus- 
sians did  not  complain  on  their  side  of  occasional  dishonesty  on  the  part  of 
foreign  merchants.  It  is  nowhere  recorded,  however,  that  they  found  it  so 
frequent  or  so  ruinous  as  to  justify  them  in  "  boycotting "  Germans  or 
Belgians. 

3  Cf.  for  ex.  Lievland,  Urkuiide,  VI.;  Aristoff,  Russian  Industry  in 
Ancient  Times,  p.  213  (Russian). 


68  RUSSIAN    TRAITS   AND    TERRORS. 

common  that  foreigners  ceased  to  buy  any  furs,  good  or  bad, 
wherever  Russians  traded  ;  that  enormous  sums  had  to  be 
distributed  in  bribes  to  the  Russian  authorities  before  the 
Germans  could  get  these  evils  diminished  to  a  point  at 
which  trading  was  possible  ;  these  and  countless  other  com- 
plaints of  long- forgotten  times  would,  if  published  without 
mention  of  persons  or  dates,  pas?  with  the  student  of  con- 
temporary Russian  history  for  cuttings  from  the  newspapers 
or  extracts  from  consular  reports  of  to-day.  Russian  mer- 
chants are  no  longer  permitted,  as  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, to  pawn  their  kith  and  kin,  their  wives  and  children, 
whom  they  were  supposed  to  love  and  live  for ;  but  they 
still  cheerfully  sacrifice  whatever  they  arc  allowed  to  pledge  : 
good  name,  friendship,  honor,  with  the  same  frequency 
with  which  their  great  grandfathers  used  to  let  their  wives 
and  children  be  sold,  prostituted,  enslaved  for  debts  that 
they  could  have  easily  discharged  ; '  and  if  the  average  mer- 
chant of  the  present  day  were  to  set  about  following  the 
advice  of  the  Roman  poet,  to  wrap  himself  up  in  the  mantle 
of  his  own  integrity,  it  would  prove  no  better  protection 
from  the  cold  blasts  of  a  wintry  world  than  the  Italian  beg- 
gar's coat,  which  was  described  as  being  made  mostly  of 
fresh  air.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Russian  merchant  may 
be  said  to  be  living  almost  as  well  up  to  his  lights  as  his 
colleague  the  German  or  the  Englishman  ;  it  is  not  his  fault 
if  these  lights  are  just  sufficient  to  intensify  the  gloom  about 
him.  He  has  been  brought  up  to  deceit  and  trickery  from 
his  childhood ;  he  has  sucked  it  in  with  his  mother's  milk, 
he  has  inherited  it  from  generations  of  dishonest  ancestors, 
it  is  the  lesson  daily,  hourly  taught  him  by  his  government 
and  his  church ;  and  if  in  the  teeth  of  all  this  he  were  to 
stand  out  in  strong  contrast  to  his  fellows,  an  honest,  straight- 
forward, veracious  man,  we  should  be  safe  to  regard  him  as 
a  genius,  a  monster  or  a  sectarian. 

15ut  merchants  and  traders,  though  they  have  more  fre- 
quent opportunity  for  its  cultivation  than  others,  have  no 
monopoly  of  dishonesty.  It  is  universal,  Pan-Russian.  Ac- 
cording to  a  popular  writer  who  had  a  life-long  experience 
of  his  countrymen,  studying  them  from  various  coigns  of 
vantage,  as  bureaucrat,  governor,  author,  journalist,  and  sus- 
pect, "roguery  is  one  of  the  forms  of  social  life,"-  and  it  is 


1  Collection  of  State  Documents,  III.  N.  60. 
2Schtschedrin,  Well-Afeant  Discourses,  ]y,2q  (Russian). 


DISHONESTY.  69 

Hobson's  choice  ;  he  who  is  not  hammer  is  anvil.  "  If  you 
manage  the  estate  of  another,"  complains  this  same  writer, 
"  and  forbear  to  take  advantage,  to  the  detriment  of  him 
who  trusts  you,  of  what  is  called  your  '  opportunity '  to 
enrich  yourself,  it  is  hard  to  be  told  that  you  are  green  — 
ah,  yes  !  very  green."  '  You  are  made  to  feel  in  such  cases 
that  you  have  been  guilty  T)(  a  social  sin,  of  something  not 
far  removed  from  treason  in  thus  swimming  against  the  cur- 
rent, and  every  man's  hand  is  straightway  raised  against  you 
for  refusing  to  raise  yours  against  any  man.  It  is  difficult 
under  such  conditions  for  a  Russian  who  has  outwitted  a 
friend  that  implicitly  trusted  him  not  to  feel  as  flushed  and 
as  happy  as  the  self-respecting  Fijian  of  a  few  years  ago 
after  swallowing  the  last  morsel  of  a  savory  enemy.  One  of 
the  truest  patriots  Russia  ever  possessed  and  one  of  the 
most  acute  observers  of  the  age  has  given  us  a  series  of 
masterly  life-like  sketches,  illustrative  of  what  is  meant  by 
saying  that  roguery  is  one  of  the  common  forms  of  social 
life,  froniAvhich  I  subjoin  one  or  two. 

''  On  the  perron  of  a  solitary  house  (in  a  country  town) 
unprotected  even  by  a  yard,  two  men  were  sitting  dressed  in 
morning  attire,  smoking  cigarettes,  and  chatting  together 
before  retiring  for  the  night.  '  Well,  you  know  that  Kharin 
lost  that  suit  of  his  ? '  one  of  them  said.  '  You  don't  mean 
it ! '  '  Oh  yes,  no  doubt  about  that.  He's  a  fool  and  so  he 
lost  it.'  'How  so?'  'Doesn't  everybody  know  that  the 
deceased  lost  the  use  of  his  hand  before  his  death.  Why, 
the  whole  town  is  well  aware  that  Margaret  Ivanovna  forged 
the  will  the  day  after  his  death.  Aye,  and  that  the  Arch- 
priest  wrote  it,  too  !  Oh  yes  !  no  doubt  at  all,  she  forged 
the  will ;  the  Archpriest  himself,  when  half-seas  over,  blurts 
it  out  often  enough.  But  for  all  that  Margaret  Ivanovna  is 
now  the  owner  of  a  cool  million,  while  Kharin  has  to 
shoulder  a  beggar's  knapsack.  And  all  because  he's  such  a 
fool ! '  '  No  mistake,  he  is  a  fool,  but  still '  —  .... 
'  Oh  !  he's  a  fool,  and  that's  the  long  and  short  of  it.  Mar- 
garet Ivanovna  offered  to  compromise  the  matter :  "  lake 
twenty  thousand,"  she  said,  "and  joy  be  with  you."  \Vhy 
didn't  he  accept?  since  he  knows  that  he's  a  fool?  Then  he 
had  another  chance  :  the  fiither  Archpriest  and  Ivan  Thera- 
pontitch  also  made  him  offers ;  "  Give  us  ten  thousand 
apiece,"  they  said,  "and  we'll  make  a  clean  breast  of  it  in 

1  Schtschedrin,  IVell-Afeant  Discourses,  p.  29  (Russian). 


70  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

court  as  witnesses  :  we'll  speak  according  to  our  consciences  ; 
we'll  say  we  signed  the  will  from  lack  of  circumspection,  and 
there  will  be  an  end  of  it."  Why  didn't  he  close  with  that, 
since  he  knows  he's  a  fool?  Margaret  Ivanovna,  she  didn't 
want  to  be  asked  twice,  I  warrant.  She  accepted  fast  enough. 
She  whipped  out  the  money  and  handed  it  over  in  a  twink- 
ling. ]^ut  he  was  as  obstinate  as  a  mule.  And  if  they  had 
asked  him  for  the  hard  cash,  there  would  be  some  excuse 
for  him,  but  no  —  all  they  wanted  was  an  I.  O.  U.  Why 
couldn't  he  have  given  it  and  then  later  on  think  better  of  it 
and  lead  them  a  pretty  dance  for  the  money?  He  might 
say  that  he  had  not  signed  it,  or  that  it  was  not  given  for 
value  received.  The  unmitigated  fool.'  "  '  Macaulay  once 
said  of  Italians  that  so  perverted  was  their  moral  sense  of 
right  and  wrong  in  the  matter  of  cunning  and  deceit,  that  if 
Othello  were  represented  before  an  Italian  audience,  the 
entire  sympathy  of  the  public  would  be  with  lago,  while  his 
dupe  would  come  in  at  most  for  their  contemptuous  pity. 
This  is  emphatically  true  of  Russians,  though,  strange  as  it 
may  seem,  far  from  engendering  universal  distrust,  it  co- 
exists with  a  degree  of  credulity  that  borders  on  the  miracu- 
lous. The  following  is  another  of  these  typical  conversations 
preserved  by  Schtschedrin,  which  throws  more  light  on  the 
social  and  moral  conceptions  of  modern  Russians  than  vol- 
umes of  statistics  : 

"  '  Nay,  but  do  listen  to  the  way  he  fooled  the  German. 
He  bought  1200  roubles  worth  of  timber  from  him,  had  it 
brought  home,  and  then  told  the  German  to  call  on  him  for 
the  money.  He  came,  was  made  much  of,  treated  to  re- 
freshments, champagne  and  all  the  rest.  "  Now,"  he  says, 
turning  to  the  German,  "  you  write  your  receipt,  while  I'm 
getting  the  money  ready,"  and  with  this  he  began  to  count 
the  notes.  The  receipt  being  drawn  up  in  a  moment,  he 
took  it,  glanced  at  it,  found  it  in  order  —  a  legal  receipt  for 
1200  roubles — and  then  clapped  it  and  the  money  into  his 
pocket.  "  You  have  acknowledged  here,  Rogdan  Rogdano- 
vitch,"  he  said,  "  that  you  have  received  the  money  in  full. 
I  don't  see  that  you  have  anything  further  to  wait  for." 
Ha  !  ha  !  ha !  That,  brother,  was  a  stroke  of  business. 
Oh,  how  we  did  laugh  !  I  thought  my  sides  would  split. 
Rut  listen  to  what's  coming.  At  first  the  German  looked  as 
if  he  did  not  grasp  what  was  the  matter,  and  then  when  it 


1  Well-Meant  Discourses,  p.  31. 


DISHONESTY,  71 

suddenly  dawned  upon  him,  he  cried  out,  "You  are  a  thief ! " 
"All  right,"  was  the  answer  he  got,  "  you  Germans  invented, 
they  say,  the  ape,  but  here  am  I,  a  Russian,  bringing  in  one 
moment  all  your  contrivances  to  naught."  IJravo  !  No, 
but  you  should  have  seen  the  German's  phiz,  frightened 
and  incredulous,  his  hands  feeling  his  pockets  the  whil-e  — 
wasn't  it  rich  ?  Germans  are  still  greenhorns  in  such  mat- 
ters ;  they're  fools  and  nothing  else.'  "  ^ 

These  pictures  are  not  overdrawn,  they  do  not  even  do 
full  justice  to  the  subject.  Take  up  any  daily  paper  or 
monthly  review,  or  printed  book  with  the  stamp  of  contem- 
porariness  upon  it,  and  you  will  be  struck  by  the  clo:e  resem- 
blance between  the  life  therein  described  and  the  scenes 
depicted  by  Schtschedrin.  Open  any  of  the  monthly  mag- 
azines, and  read  their  realistic  descriptions  of  the  ethical 
conceptions  and  practical  maxims  of  the  average  Russian, 
and  you  will  ask  yourself  in  wonder  whether  it  is  a  question 
of  wild  anarchical  tribes  in  Central  Africa  or  the  backwoods 
of  Brazil,  or  of  a  people  ruled  by  a  government  alive  even 
to  its  own  paltry  interests.  The  Northern  Messeiiger,  which 
I  take  up  almost  at  random,  describes  for  example,  in  detail, 
how  a  whole  company  of  peasants  in  Manuilovka  split  their 
sides  (or,  as  they  themselves  picturesquely  put  it,  tore  their 
intestines)  with  genuine,  hearty  laughter  at  the  recital  of 
how  a  hay  merchant  cheated  a  poor  woman,  selling  her  the 
same  load  of  rotten  hay  three  different  times.'-^ 

The  relations  of  capital  and  labor,  which  are  rapidly  de- 
veloping into  the  relations  of  governors  and  governed,  are 
hopelessly  vitiated  by  duplicity,  breach  of  faith,  downright 
roguery,  with  which  no  amount  of  Draconian  legislation  can 
successfully  grapple.  A  few  years  ago  laws  were  made  em- 
powering landowners  and  farmers  to  hire  laborers  for  several 
years'  service,  and  enacting  a  long  list  of  severe  penalties 
for  breach  of  contract.  In  practice  these  laws  have  proved 
as  efficacious  as  a  gossamer  veil  spread  out  to  stay  the  fury 
of  the  hurricane. 

Every  autumn  and  winter  the  newspapers  are  filled  with 
descriptions  of  the  harrowing  scenes  enacted  in  the  country 
districts  between  the  men  who  raise  the  corn  and  those  who 
'take  it.  Agricultural  laborers  of  both  sexes  takeo  on  by  the 
year,  or  by  the  five  years,  frequently  run  away,  leaving  their 


1  IVcll-AL-aiif  Discourses,  p.  34. 
-Northern  Messenger,  N.  7,  1888,  p.  54. 


72  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

• 

masters  in  the  lurch  at  a  most  critical  time,  when  there  are 
no  other  laborers  to  be  had  to  replace  them,  and  think  no 
evil  of  it.^  In  the  government  of  Tamboff,  for  instance, 
farmers  and  landowners,  taking  time  by  the  forelock,  secured 
a  band  of  laborers  in  advance,  at  what  seemed  a  fair  rate  of 
wages  under  the  circumstances.  The  men  eagerly  accepted 
the  terms,  and  a  portion  of  the  wages  in  advance  as  earnest 
money ;  but  they  seem  to  have  felt  no  obligation  to  come 
and  work  when  harvest  time  came  round  ;  and  the  employ- 
ers were  left  lamenting.  Complaint  was  made  to  the  magis- 
trate, and  warrants  taken  out  to  bring  the  delinquents  to 
justice,  and  very  likely  many  of  them  may  have  been  pun- 
ished ;  but  that  was  cold  comfort  for  the  landowners  whose 
corn  was  rotting  in  the  rain  and  whose  affairs  were  going  to 
ruin.^  Similar  tales  reach  us  from  the  south,  north,  and  east 
of  Russia,  where  the  people  are  suffering  the  effects  of  their 
own  dishonesty,  while  they  grumble  —  if  at  all  —  only  at 
fate.''  In  one  place  we  read  of  all  the  ponderous  machinery 
of  the  law  being  brought  to  bear  against  the  defaulting  peas- 
ants, with  the  result  that  matters  were  left  just  where  they 
were  before.  The  fugitives  were  discovered  by  the  police 
and  restored  to  their  masters  by  force,  after  the  harvest  to 
be  still  more  severely  punished,  but  in  three  days  they  arose 
again,  and,  shaking  the  dust  off  their  feet,  went  away,  saying 
"  This  time  no  man  shall  find  us."  Nor  were  they  discov- 
ered, in  that  classic  land  of  passports  and  police  supervision.* 
If  in  all  these  cases  the  employers  i)layed  the  melancholy 
part  of  victims,  the  presumable  explanation  is  that  the  con- 
ditions were  unfavorable  for  their  assuming  that  of  oppres- 
sors. They  were  indignant,  like  Bill  Nye  with  the  Heathen 
Chinee,  at  the  success  rather  than  at  the  iniquity  of  the 
proceeding.  The  great  majority  of  such  employers  take 
the  utmost  advantage  of  their  legal  position ;  cheat  their 
workmen,  starve  them,  grind  them  to  grist  like  the  corn  in 
their  mills,  and  then  jibe  and  jeer  at  them,  as  rustics  poke 
caged  bears  with  sticks.  The  Moor  has  done  his  work,  the 
Moor  can  go,  is  their  device.  Thus  we  hear  of  bands  of 
laborers  in  the  fertile,  smiling  Crimea,  weak  and  emaciated 
as  if  recovering  from  typhus  or  dying  of  consumption,  who, 
working  Ij^e  helots,  are  fed  "  upon  something  which  is  not 
bread,  but  a  black,  nauseous  mass,  the  indigestible  ingredi- 


1  The  Don  Speech,  N.  91.  '^  Cf.  v.  g.  Odessa  Neivs,  N.  1042. 

2  Tamboff  Governmental  Gazette,  ^.qZ.    '•  Odessa  Neivs,  N.  1030. 


DISHONESTY.  73 

# 

ents  of  which  no  man  can  determine."  ^  Others  are  duly 
hired  at  the  uniform  rate  of  four  roubles  a  day^uring  the 
entire  season,  and  when  they  arrive  on  the  scene  of  their 
labors  and  have  worked  some  time  are  told  that  they  will 
receive  but  two  roubles  a  day.-  In  Samara  a  numerous 
party  of  agricultural  laborers  were  hired  at  five  roubles  and 
a  half  per  dessatine  (about  2f  acres),  and  having  journeyed 
to  the  district  where  they  were  wanted  at  their  own  expense, 
were  informed  that  on  consideration  the  employer  coirid 
only  pay  them  somewhat  less  than  half  that  sum  (two 
roubles  and  a  half) .  They  returned  at  once  in  disgust  and 
spent  their  last  coins  on  the  road.^  In  other  places  whole 
companies  of  harvest  laborers  come  home  as  poor  as  they 
went,  without  a  copper  coin  in  their  pockets,  because  the 
landowners  keep  back  a  third,  or  even  a  half  of  each  man's 
earnings,  relying  on  the  reluctance  of  the  men  to  undergo 
the  loss  of  time,  the  trouble,  and  the  worry  of  suing  for  their 
wages  through  the  law  courts."*  Numbers  of  such  famishing 
wretches,  returning  from  their  harvesting,  roam  despairingly 
about  the  streets  of  the  towns  and  cities  on  their  way,  beg- 
ging for  bread  to  keep  them  alive,  and  asking  for  alms  to 
take  them  home,  and  having  asked  in  vain,  they  seize  upon 
as  thieves  what  was  denied  to  them  as  beggars. 

The  pursuit  of  trade,  properly  so  called,  as  a  means  of 
livelihood,  requires  in  Russia  no  special  training  of  the 
individual  as  in  other  countries.  Inherited  racial  aptitude, 
mother  wit,  natural  shrewdness,  and  inborn  unscrupulous- 
ness  are  deemed  amply  sufficient.  It  is  scarcely  to  be  won- 
dered at  that  men  with  no  more  varied  mental  and  moral 
outfit  should  have  transformed  trade  and  commerce  from 
powerful  instruments  of  civilization  into  a  labyrinth  of  "  ways 
that  are  dark,"  a  very  quicksand  of  deceit  and  chicanery. 
The  most  heartless  trickery,  covered  over  with  a  frank 
childlike  look  and  a  voice  clear  as  an  echo  from  the  well  of 
truth,  passes  current  as  easily  as  a  counterfeit  coin.  The 
average  trader  makes  no  bones  about  over-reaching  his 
customers,  native  or  foreign,  and  of  swearing  to  the  truth  of 
the  most  audacious  falsehood  ever  invented,  with  all  the 
cheerfulness  of  a  man  performing  a  pleasant  duty,  and  eas- 
ing his  mind.  For  his  chief  business  maxim  is  that  he  may, 
nay,  must  — 


1  Crimean  Messenger^  N.  III.  •*  Ibid. 

2  Gazette  of  Samara,  N.  155.  *  Yuschny  Krai,  N.  2591. 


74  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

"  Stamp  God's  own  name  upon  a  lie  just  made  . 

^  To  turn  a  penny  in  the  way  of  trade;" 

though  he  often  does  it  for  less  even  than  a  penny.  If  caught 
in  flagrante  delicto  and  convicted  of  downright  roguery,  he 
is  no  more  abashed  than  if  it  were  a  fjuestion  of  his  hair  grow- 
ing grey ;  and  eying  you  with  all  the  tenderness  he  can 
infuse  into  a  look,  he  will  say  :  ''  I  must  live  somehow,  your 
honor ;  if  not  by  washing,  then  by  mangling,  as  the  saying 
is.  I  could  have  dealt  with  your  honor  without  lies  or 
cheating,  but  then  your  honor  is  not  everybody  —  indeed, 
I  might  journey  on  foot  from  here  to  Kieff  and  not  meet 
with  your  equal."  The  perfect  ease  with  which  he  shuffles 
off  the  weight  of  his  ill-doings,  as  a  goose  shakes  off  drops 
of  rain-water,  forcibly  reminds  one  of  Wainamoiren,  the 
Ancient  Truthful  One  of  the  Finnish  Epos,  who  advances 
the  most  deliberate  uncalled-for  lies,  and,  when  convicted 
thereof,  with  astonishing  simplicity,  makes  answer  :  "  Well,  I 
did  lie  somewhat,"  and  conscientiously  proceeds  with  the 
previous  question.  "  If  you  don't  lie,  you  won't  sell,"  is  a 
proverb,  for  which  the  Russians  can  scarcely  put  forward 
an  exclusive  claim,  though  it  must  be  admitted  that  they 
act  upon  it  as  no  other  people,  ancient  or  modern,  have 
dared  to  act.  "  In  the  way  of  trade,"  said  a  Russian  Or- 
thodox priest  of  forty  years  standing,  in  conversation  with 
me  on  the  subject  some  months  ago,  "a  Russian  would  sell 
his  soul  to  the  Evil  One  and  then  pledge  it  to  the  Lord  ; 
and  if  an  angel  from  heaven  were  to  tell  him  that  ha  had 
swerved  somewhat  from  the  path  of  virtue,  he  would  smile 
incredulously  and  continue  to  transgress." 

The  evil  has  been  freciuently  discussed  and  explained  in 
Russia,  but  the  explanations  are  one-sided,  incomplete. 
The  press  is  inclined  to  attribute  it  to  the  overmastering 
passion  for  gold  and  to  the  Russian's  proverbial  impatience 
to  grow  rich,  in  order  that  he  himself  may  spend  the  money 
he  has  collected.'  This  account  of  the  matter  is  partially 
true,  but  only  partially.  Russians  are  oi)en  to  a  charge  of 
rapacity,  to  insatiable  cujDidity,  but  not  to  anything  savoring 
of  niggardliness,  lie  loves  money  far  less  for  its  own  sake 
or  for  "the  advantages  it  can  procure  him  in  future  than  for 
the  opportunity  it  affords  him  of  playing  the  king.  He  can 
no  more  hoard  and  pinch  and  stint  than  an  average  Bush- 


i"In  all  things,"  says  the  Novoye  Vremya,"  the  specific  quality  of  the 
Russian  mind  is  unbridled  lust  of  sordid  gain."  —  29th  September,  1889. 


DISHONESTY.  75 

man*  can  play  the  part  of  Beau  Brummel  in  the  London  of 
to-day.  He  regulates  his  budget  as  behooves«a  firm  be- 
liever in  the  doctrine  that  it  is  more  blessed  to  give  than 
to  receive  j  scatters  money  lavislily  to  the  right  and  to  the 
left,  giving  away  his  last  hundred  roubles  as  royally  as  if  he 
had  a  Fortunatus'  purse  to  fall  back  upon.  There  are  scores 
of  needy  wretches  in  want  of  a  dinner,  who  once  were  rich 
men,  in  St.  Petersburg,  Odessa,  Moscow,  Kieff,  who  built  up 
their  own  fortunes  almost  in  a  night,  and  then  scattered 
them  to  the  winds  as  if  they  were  all  mere  gold  of  Tolosa. 
There  used  to  be  a  Scotch  beggar  in  London  who  attributed 
his  poverty  to  a  single  miscalculation.  He  began,  it  ap- 
pears, at  the  age  of  thirty-five  to  spend  a  fortune  of 
;^20,ooo,  unexpectedly  left  to  him,  at  the  rate  of  p{^i,ooo 
a  year,  living  in  ease  and  idleness  the  while,  in  the  belief 
that  his  span  of  life  would  not  exceed  sixty  years ;  and  after 
the  rapid  flight  of  some  twenty-two  or  three  years  was  stu- 
pefied to  find  himself  healthy  and  a  beggar.  None  of  the 
Russian  spendthrifts  whom  I  ever  saw  or  heard  of  could 
with  truth  allege  that  they  entertained  any,  even  the  most 
slipshod,  calculations  before  frittering  away  a  fortune. 

On  the  other  hand  it  cannot  be  denied  that  hot  haste  in 
the  pursuit  of  riches  is  a  characteristic  of  the  Russian  mer- 
chant, and  does  much  to  intensify  that  spirit  of  improbity 
which  it  did  not  create.  Many  merchants  are  so  impatient 
to  do  business  that  they  cannot  even  wait  till  their  cus- 
tomers enter  their  shops,  but  must  needs  sally  forth,  lay 
violent  hands  upon  them,  and  drag  them  in.  This  is  at 
bottom  the  same  kind  of  ardor  that  the  mythical  Lien 
Chi  Altangi  observed  in  the  London  shopmen  of  last  cen- 
tury, only  duly  intensified  and  Russianized.  "'There,' 
cries  the  mercer,  showing  me  a  piece  of  fine  silk,  '  there's 
beauty.  My  Lord  Suckeskin  has  bespoke  the  fellow  to  this 
for  the  birthnight  this  very  morning ;  it  would  look  charm- 
ingly in  waistcoats.'  '  But  I  do  not  want  a  waistcoat,'  re- 
plied L  '  Not  want  a  waistcoat  ! '  returned  the  mercer  ; 
'  then  I  would  advise  you  to  buy  one.  When  waistcoats  are 
wanted,  depend  upon  it  they  will  come  dear.  Always  buy 
before  you  want,  and  you  are  sure  to  be  well  used,  as  they 
say  in  Cheapside.'  "  You  are  certainly  very  ill-used  at  times 
if  you  do  not  buy  before  you  want  in  Russia,  where  brute 
force  so  often  does  duty  for  persuasion.  A  friend  of  mine 
walking  for  the  first,  and  last,  time  in  his  life  along  the 
streets   in  the  Apnixin   Dvor  —  a   sort  of  miniature  city 


76  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

composed  of  the  shops  and  stores  of  the  genuine  Russian 
chapmen, -whose  manners,  morals,  and  mercantile  methods 
have  been  admirably  painted  by  the  playwright  Ostroffsky 
—  was  forcibly  drawn  into  a  ready-made  clothes  shop,  his 
coat  slipped  off  and  another  fitted  on  in  the  time  it  takes  to 
tell  it.  He  pleaded,  protested,  threatened  ;  the  assistants 
alternately  buUied  and  cajoled  him,  but  after  a  long  struggle 
released  him  amid  a  shower  of  picturesque  epithets.  He  had 
not  had  time  enough  to  collect  his  scattered  senses,  when  he 
was  lifted  bodily  into  a  trunk  store  and  shown  a  capacious 
trunk.  "But  I  don't  want  a  trunk,  not  even  gratis,"  he  apolo- 
getically pleaded.  "  Well,  this  is  gratis,  or  nearly  so,  only 
fifteen  roubles."  "  But  I  assure  you  I  do  not "  .  .  .  . 
"  Oh  !  you  think  it  is  not  the  best  of  its  kind.  Well,  sir, 
God  is  witness  that  you  won't  get  a  better  trunk. in  all 
Petersburg,  nor  a  cheaper.  You  are  not  used  to  bargain- 
ing? We  like  honest  men  of  your  stamp,  take  it  for  ten 
roubles."  "  Let  me  go;  I  will  have  none  of  your  trunks." 
"  Not  till  you  have  seen  some  more.  Ivan,  take  the  gentle- 
man upstairs  and  show  him  all  the  trunks  we  have.  Take 
your  time,  sir ;  a  trunk  is  bought  not  for  a  day  or  a  way, 
it's  for  a  lifetime,  sir."  But  my  friend,  who  preferred  a 
money  loss  of  ten  roubles  to  unknown  and  possibly  more 
serious  sacrifices,  paid  the  money,  had  a  droschky  called, 
and  drove  away. 

The  newspapers  have  been  constantly  full  of  complaints 
of  the  same  description.  "  Moscow  knows,"  says  the  /Rus- 
sian Courier  of  Moscow,  "  what  the  Knife  Row  is,  and  St. 
Petersburg  realizes  what  the  Cerberi  of  the  Apraxin  Dvor 
are,  how  they  fight  ainong  themselves  over  a  customer,  how 
often  a  whole  squadron  of  them  fall  foul  of  a  passer-by, 
drag  him  into  their  shop  and  violently  force  him  to  buy 
something.  The  police-courts  in  Petersburg,  where  a  long 
series  of  prosecutions  have  arisen  from  attacks  on  the  pub- 
lic in  the  Apraxin  Dvor,  treat  the  merchant  Cerberi  with  all 
the  severity  of  the  law."'  Laws  in  Russia,  however,  are 
seldoi»  efficacious  for  long  and  we  find  the  Police  Prefect 
of  Warsaw  ordering  all  merchants  in  that  city  to  bind  them- 
selves over  to  cease  in  future  from  dragging  passers-by  into 
their  shops  and  warehouses,  and  threatening  them  with  all 
the  rigors  of  the  law  if  they  break  their  promise.-  Such 
violence  is  not  always   visited  on  the  purchaser  only.     At 

1  Russian  Courier,  July,  1887.        2  Odessa  Messenger,  27111  July,  1887. 


DISHONESTY.  JJ 

Saratoff  the  other  day  a  gentleman  entered  the  shop  of  a 
fish  salesman  named  Krynkin.  While  he  was  making  a 
selection,  a  fishmonger  a  few  doors  off,  entered,  seized  the 
inoffensive  customer  by  the  throat  and  dragged  him  into  his 
own  shop.  Krynkin  expostulated,  but  was  knocked  down 
and  severely  beaten  by  his  rival,  who  then  returned  to  serve 
the  unhappy  man  whom  he  had  dragged  along  the  street 
like  a  shark.  There  were  a  number  of  people  looking  on, 
but  they  only  took  a  speculative  interest  in  the  proceedings. 
The  strokes  of  business  that  are  daily  done  in  those  stores 
and  warehouses  by  the  shaggy-bearded,  inoffensive-looking 
barbarians  would  prove  a  revelation  to  Ah  Sin  himself.  The 
following  sketch  is  taken  from  the  journals,  and  can  be 
vouched  for  as  characteristic.  A  middle-class  state  func- 
tionary enters  a  ready-made  clothes  shop  to  purchase  a  suit 
of  clothes  or  a  coat.  When  trying  it  on  he  notices  in  one 
of  the  pockets  an  article  of  value  (a  watch,  silver  cigar-case, 
etc.)  put  there  designedly  by  the  tradesman.  The  intending 
purchaser  covets  the  watch  as  well  as  the  coat,  and  keeps 
his  own  counsel.  He  pays  the  price  demanded  almost  with- 
out haggling,  such  is  his  anxiety  to  leave  the  shop.  The 
tradesman  charges  twice  as  much  as  under  ordinary  circum- 
stances, and  having  received  the  money,  stops  the  happy 
purchaser  who  is  rapidly  gliding  from  the  shop,  with  the 
words,  "  I  beg  your  pardon,  but  I  forgot  to  take  my  watch 
from  your  pocket,"  and  having  removed  it,  adds,  '*'  You 
may  go  now,  many  thanks."  The  other  day  a  certain  N. 
went  into  one  of  these  shops  to  purchase  an  overcoat.  He 
was  exposed  to  the  above  described  temptation  and  suc- 
cumbed. Seduced  by  the  massive  silver  cigar  case  stuck  in 
the  pocket,  he  paid  ;^2  12s.  for  an  article  worth  £^\  los.  at 
most,  and  at  the  threshold  of  the  door  he  was  relieved  of 
his  prize  and  left  the  shop  meditating  revenge.  A  few  days 
later  he  returns  to  the  same  store,  treats  for  a  morning 
coat,  puts  it  on,  and  feels  the  inevitable  cigar-case.  Having 
hastily  substituted  a  tin  cigar-case  silvered  over  for  the  gen- 
uine bait,  he  haggled  a  little  to  save  appearances,  declii#d  to 
buy,  and  went  his  way.  When  the  theft  was  discovered 
the  tradesman  was  naif  enough  to  bruit  it  abroad  and  to  in- 
veigh against  the  rascality  of  the  St.  Petersburg  public;^ 
forgetting  that  dishonesty  is  less  the  monopoly  of  any  one 
profession  than  a  talent  lying  latent  in  all  his  countrymen, 

1  Novoye   Vremya,  i8th  August,  1888. 


78  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

waiting  only  for  the  occasion,  like  the  /Eolian  harp  for  the 
caressing  breeze. 

If  the  Russian  public  were  alive  to  its  own  vital  interests, 
nothing  less  than  force  would  cause  it  to  consume  many  of 
the  articles  of  food  that  are  sold  in  the  shops.     A\'hcn  such 
an  article  as  pepper  is  adulterated  to  the  extent  that  a  pound 
of  that  condiment  contains  but  two  ounces  of  real  pepper, 
and   a  pud   (about   thirty-seven   pounds),  which   sells  for 
twenty- four  roubles,  costs  the  vendor  only  three,  one  can 
form  an  adequate  idea  of  the  proportions  assumed  by  adul- 
teration.    Four  years  ago  a  corresjoondent  of  the  Moscow  Ga- 
zette interviewed  a  well-known  Moscow  wine-merchant,  whose 
piety  is  ecjual  to  his  business  qualifications.     This  is  what 
they  said    to   each  other:  —  "How   is   business?"      "We 
can't  complain,  thanks  be  to  God.     Last  year  I  sold  no  less 
than  So,ooo  botUes  of  Madeira  alone."     "Where  did  you 
get    such    a    large   quantity   of   that   wine?     The   island   of 
Madeira  produces  altogether  10,000  barrels   ( ?)    of  wine, 
of  which   only  3,000  come    to    Europe."     The    wine-mer- 
chant smiled  and  answered,  "  God  sends  it.     What  do  you 
suppose  I  pay  a  chemical  expert  3,000  roubles  with  board 
and  lodging  for?     And  what  profit  could  I  make  if  I  sold 
mere  wine?     It  would  cost  me  from  4fd.  to  z^\A.  a-bottle  ; 
I  might  sell  it  for  8d.  or  qcL     If  I  were  to  conduct  my  busi- 
ness like  that  I  might  just  as  well  throw  the  beggar's  sack 
over  my  shoulder  at  once.     It's  a  vastly  different  thing  if 
out  of  this  wine  you  fabricate  Madeira,  and  a  bottle  of  it  costs 
you  yd.  or  is.,  while  you  sell  it  for  3s.  or  4s.;  that's  what 
I  call  business."     "Yes,  but  that  is  adulteration,  falsifica- 
tion," I  objected.     "  Now   you're  a  man  of  '  education,'  " 
said  the  merchant,  "  and  yet  you  call  my  Madeira  an  adul- 
teration.    Do  you  eat  beetroot?"     "Yes."     "  And  is  sugar 
made  of  beetroot?  "     "  Undoubtedly,"     "  Well,  and  do  you 
call  sugar  a  falsification.     And  when  the  confectioner  makes 
sweetmeats  from  sugar,  is  that  adulteration?  "     "No  doubt 
confectioners'  sweets  are  at  times  harmful  and  even  poison- 
ous ;#but  your  sherries  and  Madeiras,  with  their  noxious 
ingredients,  are  extremely  common,  and  you  are  seriously 
injuring  the  health  of  those  who  consume  them  —  some- 
times you  poison  them  outright."     The   merchant  smiled 
and  answered  according  to  his  piety  :    "  If  God  does  not 
send  death,  you  may  drink  any  stuff  you  like,  and  you  will 
be  safe  and  sound.     'And  if  .you  drink  any  deadly  thing  it 
shall  not  hurt  you.'     Do  you  know  whose  words  these  are  ? 


DISHONESTY.  79 

If  you  know  you  are  bound  to  believe.  You  may  drink 
water  without  praying  over  it  and  sicken."  ' 

Occasionally  the  police,  dissatisfied  with  their  share  of 
the  spoils,  make  a  raid  and  seize  on  a  hogshead  or  two  of 
alcoholic  poison,  or  a  chest  of  sand  called  tea,  and  prose- 
cute the  public  poisoner.  But  long  before  the  unwieldy 
machine  of  the  law  can  be  brought  to  bear  upon  him  he 
again  makes  friends  with  the  mammon  of  inicjuity,  and  the 
"wine"  and  "spirits"  in  the  casks  carefully  sealed  up*by 
the  law  officers,  mysteriously  changes  to  pure  water  or  evap- 
orates. In  such  cases,  says  an  Odessa  journal,  either  the 
vodka  completely  disappears  from  the  vessel,  which  was 
sealed  with  the  seal  of  the  Revenue  Office,  or  at  the  very 
least  it  changes  to  water.-  Adulteration  of  food  is  common 
to  all  countries,  and  even  in  England  people  are  slow  to 
realize  the  extent  to  which  they  are  imposed  upon  by 
unscrupulous  speculators.  The  special  features  of  the  Rus- 
sian practice,  however,  are  its  universality,  openness,  and 
the  impunity  enjoyed  by  the  merchants  whose  profits  are 
dependent  upon  it.  Coffee  bought  in  Moscow  in  April, 
1887,  for  IS.  6d.  per  pound  was  analyzed.  It  was  fine  qual- 
ity to  look  at,  and  had  a  delightful  aroma.  Many  of  the 
berries,  however,  appeared  less  bright-looking  than  the  others, 
and  when  taken  out  and  examined  by  the  analyst  of  the 
university  were  found  to  consist  of  clay  mixed  with  chicory, 
without  a  trace  of  coffee.^ 

Turning  to  banks  and  counting-houses,  we  find  that  they 
have  become  a  byeword  in  Russia.  It  is  but  a  short  time 
since  that  a  new  law  was  launched  against  the  sharp  prac- 
tices of  some  of  the  best-known  and  apparently  respec- 
table banks  of  St.  Petersburg  "^  —  a  law  which  will  prove  as 

1  Moscow  Gazette,  October,  1887 ;  cf.  also  Saratoff  Gazette,  23rd  Octo- 
ber, 1887. 

2  Cf.  Odessa  Neivs,  20th  June  and  4th  July,  1888,  where  cases  of  trans- 
formation and  evaporation  are  described  in  detail. 

3  The  following  is  taken  from  an  official  report  on  teas  supplied  by  well- 
known  firms  :  —  Green  tea,  14s.  a  lb. :  Of  poor  quality ;  contains  boiled  tea 
leaves,  and  is  largely  colored  with  ultramarine.  Black  tea,  4s.  4d.  a  lb.  •Con- 
tains very  little  tea,  mixed  with  boiled  tea  leaves  and  willow  herb,  colored 
with  burnt  sugar ;  27  per  cent,  of  sand.  Reddish  tea,  4s.  a  lb. :  60  per 
cent,  of  boiled  tea  leaves  and  12  per  cent,  of  sand.  Black  tea,  3s.  gd.  a  lb. : 
Contains  no  tea;  is  made  of  boiled  tea  leaves,  elm  and  willow  herb;  40 
per  cent,  of  sand.  Black  tea,  5s.  5d.  a  lb. :  50  per  cent,  of  willow  herb  and 
elm  leaves.  Black  tea,  6s.  6d.  a  lb.  :  50  per  cent,  of  boiled  tea  leaves,  and 
others  of  a  plant  unknown;  colored  with  logwood ;  7  per  cent,  of  sand. — 

VVarsaiv  Diary,  i6th  April,  1888. 

•*  Cf.  yournal  de  St.  Petersbourg,  26th  September,  1889.  Graschdanin, 
26th  September,  1889.  Novoye  Vremya,  26th  and  27th  September,  1889, 
etc.,  etc. 


So  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

efficacious  as  the  feather  of  a  young  humming  bird  employed 
to  tickle  the  side  of  a  healthy  rhinoceros.  Within  the  eight 
years  most  of  the  "best  "  banks  in  Russia  have  stopped  pay- 
ment, and  tens  of  thousands  of  peasant  farmers,  clergymen, 
widows  and  orphans  who  put  their  trust  in  these  establish- 
ments a])i)roved  by  the  (Government  were  turned  adrift  on 
the  world  to  beg  from  door  to  door.  The  horrors  of  war 
have  been  many  a  time  described  with  realistic  vividness  by 
artRtic  pens  in  prose  and  verse.  It  would  require  a  mas- 
terly hand  to  depict  the  wailing  and  the  weeping,  the  cries 
of  anguish,  the  looks  of  despair,  the  suicides,  the  robberies, 
the  hideous  crimes  and  heartrending  sufferings  that  ensued 
upon  the  failure  of  the  banks  of  Skopin,  Kozloff,  Orel, 
wherein  were  swallowed  up  millions  of  roubles  laboriously 
scraped  together  by  the  thousand  of  units  within  whom,  in 
spite  of  all  their  inborn  recklessness,  stirred  a  faint  percep- 
tion that  providence  and  thrift  might  after  all  be  worth 
a  fair  trial.  The  tale  of  wholesale,  cold-blooded  spoliation 
that  was  unfolded  during  the  trials  of  the  galaxy  of  swin- 
tlling  bankers  who  have  reduced  thousands  to  beggary  dur- 
ing the  past  eight  or  ten  years,  might  well  cause  any  but  the 
most  sanguine  patriot  to  despair  of  the  future  of  Russia. 

Men  can  never  wholly  escape  the  influence  of  their  age 
and  country  ;  ^nd  it  is  to  be  regretted  rather  than  wondered 
at  that  enlightened  physicians,  men  of  science,  whose  edu- 
cation and  mission  would  seem  to  give  promise  of  better 
things,  should  compete  with  professional  swindlers  in  this 
inglorious  race  for  ill-gotten  wealth.  Last  spring  a  wealthy 
gentleman  called  upon  a  well-known  and  "  respectable " 
dentist  of  Moscow,  reputed  to  be  a  brilliant  light  in  his  pro- 
fession, and  ordered  a  complete  set  of  teeth  in  gold.  When 
it  was  ready  his  expectations  were  fulfilled  to  the  utmost 
in  all  but  the  color  of  the  metal.  "  Excuse  me,  doctor,"  he 
said,  "but  is  this  pure  gold?"  The  scientific  light  blazed 
out  angrily  :  "  How  can  you  doubt  it?  For  whom  do  you 
take  me,  sir?"  on  which  the  gentleman  felt  ashamed  of 
himself  and  left.  He  went  straight  to  a  chemist's  laboratory, 
however,  and  had  the  usual  tests  applied,  when  it  was  made 
evident  that  the  metal  was  copper  without  a  trace  of  gold 
anywhere.'  "  Our  hydrotherapeutic  establishments,"  says 
one  of  the  principal  organs  of  the  St.  Petersburg  press, 
"  under   cover  of  philanthropic   advertisements,   announce 


1  Novoye  Vremya,  13th  April,  1889. 


DISHONESTY.  8 1 

that  they  charge,  say,  twenty-five  roubles  for  a  course  of 
treatment.  A  patient  of  scanty  means  beheves  and  begins 
the  course,  and  it  is  soon  made  clear  that  he  has  been 
lured  into  a  swindling  trap.  They  charge  him  for  every- 
thing as  extras,  and,  instead  of  twenty-five  roubles,  exact 
forty-five  or  even  fifty.  The  patient,  not  possessing  the 
means  of  defraying  these  unforeseen  expenses,  is  first 
stripped  of  everything  of  which  he  can  be  relievea,  and  then 
turned  out  when  half  the  course  is  over.  He  is  thus  flee-ced 
of  his  money,  gets  no  benefit  in  return,  and  sometimes 
incurs  positive  harm  by  abruptly  breaking  off  a  drastic 
water-cure."  ^ 

It  would  be  no  easy  matter  to  point  out  a  trade,  a  pro- 
fession, a  calling  followed  by  genuine  Russians,  in  the  code 
of  which  elementary  honesty  has  a  place.  It  is  not  merely 
the  unwritten  law,  the  vague,  shadowy  borderland  of  sharp 
practice  that  lies  between  mere  infiimy  and  the  more  pal- 
pable terrors  of  stone  walls  and  iron  bars,  that  is  daily  en- 
croached upon,  but  the  Rubicon  of  the  Penal  Code  is 
continually  passed  with  a  calm  tranquiUity  that  guaranteed 
immunity  from  mere  human  penalties  could  scarcely  justify. 
The  bland  simplicity  with  which  wholesale  robberies  are 
carried  on  for  years  within  the  knowledge  of  the  public,  the 
priests,  and  the  police,  amazes  even  travellers  who  have 
lived  long  in  China.  That  light  weight,  now  as  of  yore, 
should  be  eked  out  by  heavy  stones,-  that  trade-marks 
should  be  forged  ;  food  adulterated  ;  goods  despatched  to 
distant  purchasers  which  are  infinitely  inferior  to  the  samples 
that  elicited  the  orders,  is  no  doubt  highly  reprehensible, 
but  might  still,  perhaps,  be  glossed  over  as  venial  errors  by 
a  moralist  willing  to  make  allowances  for  exceptional  human 
weakness  under  strong  temptation.  But  notorious  vulgar 
robbery,  propped  up  with  perjury,  forgery,  and  every  con- 
ceivable form  of  chicanery,  and  raised  to  the  dignity  of  one 
of  the  recognized  methods  of  trade  by  representative  men 
of  good  standing,  who  can  yet  be  religious  without  blas- 
phemy, and  edifying  without  hypocrisy,  would  seem  in 
sober  truth  to  imply  a  standard  of  ethics  specifically  differ- 
ent from  that  of  civilized  nations. 


1  Graschdanhi,  i8th  September,  1889. 

2  Take  as  a  typical  instance  the  firm  of  Messrs.  Weingurt,  of  Odessa, 
who  received  from  the  factory  with  wliich  they  deal  and  sold  to  their  own 
customers  without  having  previously  verified  it,  sugar  in  which  to  nine 
cwts.  of  sugar  there  was  one  cwt.  of  stones  {Odessa  News,  7th  December, 
1887). 


82  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

There  is  a  curious  class  of  discount  booksellers  in  Russia 
who  thrive  and  prosper  while  the  fate  that  continually 
threatens  and  often  overtakes  the  publishing  firms  whose 
works  they  trade  in  is  insolvency  and  ruin.  Vast  palatial 
buildings  that  yield  a  handsome  yearly  income  prove  that 
they  drive  a  brisk  trade  in  books,  and  give  the  lie  to  the 
saw,  that  honesty  is  the  best  policy.  Their  method  is  simitle  : 
they  usually  fee  young  apprentices  of  the  princijjal  publish- 
ing houses  to  steal  whatever  books  are  in  demand,  and  to 
deliver  to  their  own  boy-apprentices,  who  are  also  members 
of  the  conspiracy,  as  many  copies  of  them  as  may  be  required 
by  their  customers.  That  the  consciences  of  these  trades- 
men give  them  no  uneasiness  needs  no  more  convincing 
proof  than  the  fact  that  some  of  them  are  bringing  up  their 
own  children  to  the  business.  Nor  could  it  well  be  other- 
wise. Trade  is  held  high  in  esteem  by  men  of  all  countries, 
classes,  and  confessions,  and  to  their  thinking  trade  is  merely 
the  art  of  robbing  your  neighbor  without  exposing  yourself 
to  his  vengeance.  The  first  part  of  this  definition  is  tersely 
expressed  by  the  proverb,  "  Wherein  one  deals,  therein  one 
steals,"  while  the  moral  blamelessness  of  robbery  could 
scarcely  be  proclaimed  with  greater  force  than  in  this  other 
proverb  :  "  Why  not  steal,  so  long  as  there's  no  one  to 
hinder  it?" 

Another  of 'these  booksellers,  we  are  told,  did  a  thriving 
little  trade,  in  addition  to  the  sale  of  books,  in  wax  candles 
made  by  the  monks,  in  accordance  with  the  canons  of  the 
church.  He  obtained  the  candles  in  the  same  way  that  he 
came  by  the  volumes  :  the  litUe  boys  who  were  assisting  the 
monks  to  sell  them  being  paid  to  steal  them.  " //<?  7vas 
often  detected,  and  occasionally  threatened  with  the  legal 
consequences  of  his  acts."  It  was  on  these  occasions,  we 
are  told,  that  the  religious  principles  to  which  he  always 
tenaciously  clung  buoyed  him  up  and  bore  him  safely  out 
of  danger.  "  I  say,  Masha  !  "  he  would  cry  out  to  his  wife, 
who  was  silting  in  a  little  ])arl()r  inside,  "  take  a  wax  candle, 
a  good  thick  one,  mind,  and  run  off  and  light  it  before  the 
icofiy  ^  And  his  faith  was  strengthened  by  the  knowledge 
that  his  fervent  prayers  for  a  way  out  of  the  difficulty  were 
always  heard  and  granted.  A  less  pious  colleague  was  i)ro- 
portionately  less  fortunate,  and  once  had  to  stand  his  trial, 
lie  made  up  in  sharpness,  however,  for  what  he  lacked  in 

1  Novoye  Vremya,  21st  October,  1888. 


DISHONESTY.  S$ 

piety,  ami  "wriggled  out  of  the  accusation  in  a  truly  masterly 
style."  Chatting  after  his  acquittal  with  his  neighbor,  the 
man  who  had  prosecuted  him  for  the  theft,  "  What  a  green- 
horn you  are,  to  be  sure  !  "  he  exclaimed.  "  If,  when  you 
caused  the  raid  to  be  made  on  my  shop,  you  had  only 
looked  under  the  counter,  you  would  have  found  all  the 
stolen  books  there.  But  it's  evident  that,  to  punish  you  for 
your  litigiousness,  God  turned  your  eyes  away."  ' 

To  some  readers  the  curious  combinations  of  religion  and 
rascality,  frientlship  and  treachery,  without  the  cement  of  hy- 
pocrisy, which  are  so  conspicuous  a  feature  of  the  Russian 
character  may  seem  vastly  amusing.  They  undoubtedly 
have  the  charm  of  novelty  and  are  as  real  as  they  seem  im- 
probable. They  suggest  to  our  mind's  eye  the  picture  of 
an  unimagined  community,  the  antipodes  of  Plato's  Utopia, 
and  compared  with  which  Lamb's  imaginary  Sydney-  was  a 
colony  of  stern  Fabricii  — 

"  Scorncrs  of  all-conquering  gold." 

But  the  phenomenon  has  also  its  serious  sides,  which  consti- 
tute the  only  raison  d'etre  of  its  delineation  here.  What, 
for  instance,  could  be  more  terrible  than  the  position  of  the 
boys  who  serve  as  apprentices  and  have  to  sell  their  souls  to 
their  masters,  sometimes  against  their  will?  "  Not  to  men- 
tion," says  a  publicist  who  has  fully  discussed  this  subject, 
"  the  boys  who  are  in  the  service  of  the  discount  booksellers 
and  are  initiated  into  all  the  secrets  of  a  swindHng  trade  and 
systematically  demoralized,  youths  who  serve  their  time  to 
respectable,  orderly  and  honest  publishing  firms  are  in  a 
very  sad  plight  :  first  frankly  tempted  to  steal  one  volume 
from  the  warehouse,  if  the  boy  yields,  abstracts  a  book  and 
sells  it  to  the  discount  bookseller,  he  has  thereby  delivered 
himself  into  his  clutches  for  all  time.  He  is  ever  afterwards 
receiving  orders  to  steal  popular  works,  and,  if  he  demurs, 
is  threatened  with  public  exposure."^  This  has  been  going 
on  for  years  —  nay,  from  time  immemorial,  and  to-day  it  is 
the  broad  rule,  not  the  exception.  "  It  was  proved  in 
court,"  the  St.  Petersburg  press  remarks,  "  that  the  practices 
of  Semenof  (a  bookseller  tried  a  few  months  ago  for  theft) 
represent  the  usual  procedure  of  our  discount  booksellers."^ 

1  AWct'tf  ?Vc/;m7,  2ist  October,  1888. 

2  "  And  tell  me  what  your  Sydneyites  do?     Are  they  thieving  all  day 
Ion??     Merciful  heaven  !  " 

3  Npvoye  Vreiiiva,  21st  October,  1888. 

^  Ibid.     24th   Jklay,   1889.     For  another  curious  case    of  robbery    by  a 
bookseller  see  Novoye  Vrcmya,  4th  October,  1889. 


84  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TICRRORS. 

There  are  probably  more  beggars  in  Russia  alone  than  in 
all  the  rest  of  Europe  taken  together,  a  goodly  number  of 
whom  are  men  of  considerable  means  who  might  live  in 
absolute  comfort,  but  prefer  to  lead  a  wandering  life,  putting 
by  from  8s.  to  los.  a  day ; '  while  healthy  men  and  boys  are 
deprived  of  their  eyesight,  horribly  mutilated  and  barbar- 
ously deformed  by  monsters  called  "  leaders,"  with  whom 
they  conclude  a  business  compact  before  exposing  them- 
selves in  the  markets,  fairs,  and  bazaars  of  their  Empire  to 
the  gaze  and  ])ity  of  the  people.^  There  is  quite  enough 
real  poverty  and  misery  in  the  country  without  simulating 
more.  Famine  for  instance,  like  cholera  in  India,  is  peren- 
nial, killing  off  as  many  wretches  as  any  epidemic.  The 
peasants  bestir  themselves  to  alleviate  the  suffering  they  can- 
not remedy  —  the  Government  never  does  —  but  at  the  same 
time  they  actively  assist  scheming  speculators  to  balk  their 
own  humane  intentions,  and  they  shake  their  shanties  with 
homeric  laughter  at  the  cleverness  of  the  trick.  Thus  an 
enterprising  sharper  who  contracted  lately  with  the  Sarapul- 
sky  Zcmstvo  to  distribute  to  the  needy  peasants  a  fixed 
quantity  of  corn  for  seed,  of  which  he  actually  possessed 
but  a  fractional  part,  distributed  what  he  owned  many  times 
over,  getting  it  back  each  time,  and  keeping  it  for  himself  in 
the  end,  satisfying  the  easy-going  peasants  and  realizing  a  con- 
siderable sum  of  money  by  the  operation.^  For  the  key  to 
conduct  of  this  kind  we  need  not  look  further  than  cupidity  on 
the  one  side  and  hebetude  on  the  other  ;  there  are  thousands 
of  cases,  however,  which  seem  psychologically  explicable  only 
on  the  assumption  of  inherited  kleptomania,  a  theory  fre- 
quently relied  on  by  Russian  medical  experts,  and  still  more 
frequently  by  Russian  juries.  It  would  certainly  seem  to 
cover  the  conduct  of  the  public  who  visit  and  read  in  the 
library  of  Samara,  who  are  publicly  accused  in  the  local 
press  of  shamelessly  stealing  whatever  books  they  can  lay 
hands  on.  The  remedy  proposed  by  the  aggrieved  Director 
seems  to  favor  that  theory  and  is  evidently  based  on  the 
view  of  theft  embodied  in  the  proverb  cited  above,  for  he 
requests  the  visitors  to  the  library  "  to  s])y  upon  each  other," 
in  the  interests  of  all.''  The  same  distressing  ailment,  inher- 
ited from  their  parents,  doubtless  drove  the  band  of  volun- 

1  Messenger  of  the  Volga,  'Z'zwiX  June,  1888. 

2  Yaroslavsky  Governmental  Gazette,  October,  1888. 

8  Novoye  Vreinya,  9th  August,  1888;  Messenger  of  the  Volga,  August,  1888. 
*  Gazette  of  Samara,  December,  1887 ;  Novosti,  January  1st,  i888. 


DISHONESTY.  •  8$ 

teer  thieves  of  the  district  of  Slavyanoserbsk  —  many  of 
whom  were  in  affluent  circumstances  —  to  execute  all  the 
robberies  traditionally  associated  with  successful  fairs,  mar- 
kets, and  bazaars  ; '  nor  need  one  ask  for  any  more  satisfac- 
tory explanation  of  the  extensive  thefts  that  were  lately 
committed  at  the  Kieff  flower-show,  numbers  of  "  respect- 
able "  visitors  stowing  away  the  "rare  and  beautiful  flowers 
in  their  cylinder  hats  and  dress  improvers." - 

The  Government,  which  contemplates  these  unerring 
symptoms  of  moral  paralysis  with  a  contented  eye,  has 
nevertheless  had  striking  proofs  of  the  practical  inconven- 
iences which  it  is  calculated  to  cause  in  times  of  great 
national  crisis.  Thus  the  colossal  web  of  knavishness  and 
villainy,  spun  by  the  lords  of  high  places  during  the  Russo- 
Turkish  war,  in  which  the  meanest  soldiers  were  caught  and 
had  their  life-blood  sucked  out  by  the  bloated  human  spiders 
for  whom  they  were  recklessly  risking  their  lives,  was  within 
an  ace  of  occasioning  a  national  disaster.  Such  conspiracies 
of  the  shepherds  against  their  sheep  are  as  common  in 
Russia  as  snowstoruis  in  winter.  They  pass  unnoticed  in 
foreign  countries,  or  if  spoken  of  are  "  semi-ofiicially  con- 
tradicted "  by  the  Jotirnal  de  St.  Peter sbourg,  and  people 
not  knowing  whom  to  believe  shrug  their  shoulders  and  pass 
on.  Who  in  England  paid  any  attention  to  the  extensive 
frauds  on  the  Treasury  and  on  special  funds  reserved  for 
benevolent  purposes,  committed  by  high  functionaries  of 
State,  on  the  discovery  of  which  the  late  Minister  of  the 
Interior,  M.  Makoff,  wound  up  his  accounts  with  the  world 
by  shooting  himself  in  his  chambers  one  night?  Yet  the 
fliarnond  necklace  fraud  was  a  joke  in  comparison.  The 
Grand  Railway  Company  of  Russia,  "  sanctioned  by  the 
Most  High,"  as  the  Tsar  is  officially  described,  is  affirmed 
by  the  principal  newspaper  in  Russia  to  have  defrauded  the 
public  during  several  years  past  of  twelve  million  roubles.^ 
The  Novosti  informs  us  that  the  Volga  Steam  Navigation 
Company  have  been  giving  large  dividends  to  shareholders, 
thanks  to  the  frauds  which  they  have  been  practising  upon 
the  Government  for  several  years  past,  and  which  now 
amount  to  several  millions.* 

From  the  days  of  the  Hansa  down  to  the  present,  Russia's 
commercial  and  political  reputation  among  foreigners  has 

1  Northern  Messenger,  January,  1889.  2  Jbid. 

8  Novoye  Vremya,  28th  August,  1888.  ■•  Novosti,  gtli  May,  1889. 


86  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

lost  nothing  only  because  it  had  nothing  to  lose.  A  certain 
limited,  working  confidence  based  upon  obvious  mutual  in- 
terests, without  which  all  social  intercourse  would  be  impos- 
sible, has  necessarily  been  exhibited  by  foreign  merchants 
and  governments  from  time  to  time.  But  even  this  shadow 
of  a  good  name  has  been  repeatedly  realized  to  the  last 
farthing,  until  the  word  Russian  is  become  synonymous  witli 
qualities  subversive  of  everything  implied  by  relations  of 
trade,  commerce,  and  friendship.  Examples  abound.  Rus- 
sian kerosene,  for  instance,  is  looked  upon  by  English  pur- 
chasers with  "  misgivings,"  as  we  learn  from  the  Russian 
Consul  at  Hull,^  whose  countrymen  found  no  better  way  to 
retrieve  their  lost  reputation  than  by  damaging  that  of  a 
competitor,  making  thousands  of  tin  cans  in  all  respects 
identical  with  those  used  by  American  firms,  filling  them 
with  wretched  stuff  and  flooding  therewith  the  markets  of 
Central  and  Southern  Europe,  where  they  were  bought,  sold, 
and  condemned  as  first-class  American  kerosene.-  In  Brazil 
Russian  canvas  for  sails  is  being  "boycotted,"  while  the 
French  and  English  material  is  eagerly  purchased,  because 
"  conscientiously  "  prepared.'^  In  Belgium  Russian  timber  has 
no  chance  in  the  competition  with  Norwegian,  Swedish,  Hun- 
garian, for  the  same  reason.^  As  to  flax,  any  quantity  of  it 
would,  we  are  officially  assured,  be  accepted  gladly,  if  only 
honestly  sorted  and  sold.  "  At  present,  however,"  adds  the 
Russian  representative,  in  his  latest  report  to  his  govern- 
ment, "  in  the  cases  containing  flax  from  Russia  you  can 
almost  always  find  stones,  old  ropes,  etc.,  which  add  greatly 
to  the  weight  and  spoil  the  quality  of  the  merchandise.  It 
is  owing  to  this  fraud  that  Russian  flax  fetches  only  half 
the  price  of  the  inferior  qualities  of  the  Belgian  articled  * 
Official  complaints  on  this  head  have  been  received  by  the 
Russian  authorities  from  Lille,  Leeds,  Dundee,  and  other  Eu- 
ropean cities,  much  as  they  used  to  be  received  from  the  Han- 
seatic  cities  of  the  fourteenth  century.    Even  Russian  eggs  in 

1  Report  of  the  Rusy'ian  Consul  in  Hull,  25tli  March,  1889. 

2  I  have  reason  to  believe  tliat  a  complaint  on  this  subject  was  addressed 
to  the  Russian  authorities  by  the  United  States  Government. 

'^  Report  of  Russian  Legation  in  Brazil ;  Rio  de  Janeiro,  25th  February, 
1889. 

4   Report  of  M.  Ratmanoff  of  the  Russian  Legation  in  Brazil. 

^  Ibid.  The  Russian  Department  of  Agriculture  admits  that  "Arch- 
angel, in  consequence  of  the  distrust  entertained  towards  it  by  foreign 
manufacturers,  has  lost  all  importance  as  an  export  port  for  flax."  ^ 
Journal  of  Kazan ,  gth  November,  1887.  The  same  fate,  adds  that  journal, 
is  sure  to  overtake  Riga. 


DISHONESTY.  S/ 

England  fetch  forty  per  cent,  less  than  eggs  from  other 
countries  of  tlie  Continent,  merely  because,  being  Russian, 
they  are  believed  to  be  everything  else  which  this  fatal  word 
implies.' 

But  the  staple  export  of  Russia  as  an  agricultural  country 
is  corn,  of  which  Great  Britain  is  a  purchaser  to  the  extent 
of  about  six  millions  sterling.  Yet  the  manipulations  to 
which  that  corn,  excellent  by  nature,  is  subjected  before  it 
reaches  this  country  would  seem  incredible  were  they  not 
vouched  for  by  the  most  trustworthy  authorities  in  Russia, 
and  evident  to  all  corndealers  of  the  world.  It  is  no  easy 
thing  to  believe,  and  yet  we  have  it  on  the  undisputed 
authority  of  all  parties  concerned,  that  the  corn-exporters 
of  the  city  of  Liban  had  the  coolness  to  request  the  authori- 
ties of  the  Public  Corn  Warehouse  of  Yelets  to  sell  them 
the  sweepings  that  remained  over  after  the  sorting  of  the 
oats,  which  consisted  "  of  earth,  husks,  unripe  grainless  ears, 
fine  tares,  and  pigweed,"  in  order,  as  they  honestly  ex- 
plained, to  mix  them  with  tlie  oats  to  be  exported  to  Eng- 
land. The  Warehouse  authorities  refused  to  be  a  party  to 
this  fraud,  but  the  exporters,  who  insisted  and  based  their 
request  on  the  obstinate  "  refusal  of  British  importers  to 
purchase  oats  without  the  admixture  of  compost,"  obtained 
elsewhere  about  one  hundred  thousand  poods  (about  2,500 
bushels)  of  what  the  official  corn-broker  and  representative 
of  the  Government  terms  "  unadulterated  manure,"  with 
which  they  humored  the  fabulous  caprices  of  their  English 
customers."  According  to  a  Russian  expert,  who  has  lately 
published  his  views  on  the  matter,  the  net  gain  to  the  com- 
plaisant exporters  on  this  commercial  operation  was  one 
hundred  per  cent.  He  assures  his  countrymen  that  this 
practice  goes  on  at  all  times  and  places  in  the  l^npire, 
"  otherwise,"  he  explains,  "  our  corn  export  offices  would 
not  be  found  everywhere  in  such  a  prosperous  condition."'' 

The  official  agent  of  the  Russian  Ministry  of  Finance  in 
London  timidly  informs  his  chief  that  the  quality  of  Russian 
oats  is  "  so  inferior  to  the  samples  that  the  importers  are 


1  Cf.  Official  Messenger  of  Finances,  N.  19.  Article  entitled  "  The  Egg 
Export  Trade." 

■-  Declaration  of  the  Correspondent  of  the  Ministry  of  Finances  of  Grasch- 
danin,  12th  Ai^ril,  18S9.  All  the  Russian  papers  have  discussed  this  suliject 
ad  nauseam.  Last  winter  the  demand  for  this  manure  to  make  tlie  blend 
SO  agreeable  to  Englishmen  was  so  great  that  prices  rose  to  8d.  a  bushel. 

^  Novoye  Vremya,  nth  September,  1889. 


88  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

compelled  to  cut  down  the  covenanted  price  as  much  as  gd. 
a  quarter,  and  that  this  deduction  is  often  increased  to  is. 
6d.  a  quarter."^  In  iS86  some  of  the  largest  importing 
firms  of  England  consulted  together  and  resolved  to  avoid 
as  much  as  possible  purchasing  barley  from  Russia,  on  the 
ground  that  in  the  consignments  of  barley  sent  from  Odessa 
to  l^ngland,  a  large  quantity  of  earth  was  added. ^ 

This  is  the  highway  of  Russian  commercial  practice,  of 
which  the  driest  of  official  documents  are  the  milestones. 
\\'hither  it  leads  seems  to  interest  least  the  ])ersons  whom  it 
most  nearly  concerns.  Lack  of  faith  in  Russian  honesty, 
lack  of  trust  in  gaseous  promises  explains  why  so  many 
foreigners  have  themselves  gone  to  Russia  to  develop  the 
resources  of  the  country ;  why  the  linen  and  cotton  of 
Poland  are  driving  those  of  the  Moscow  factories  even  from 
the  home  markets  ;  why  the  timber  trade  is  managed  by 
Englishmen,  and  the  kerosene  trade  has  fallen  into  the 
hands  of  a  Swede  and  a  foreign  Jew.  But  even  in  Russia 
the  shrewdest  foreigner,  assisted  by  native  talent,  is  not  always 
able  to  avoid  falling  into  the  innumerable  snares  spread  on  all 
sides  of  him.  The  laws  are  usually  as  powerless  to  help 
him  as  if  they  were  written  in  dust  or  on  the  sand  of  the 
ebbing  sea.  The  following  typical  instance  of  what  traders 
—  native  and  foreign  —  have  to  expect  will  astonish  only 
those  who  have  practically  no  knowledge  of  Russia  or  the 
Russians. 

In  1889  the  Berlin  Timber  Company  floated  down  the 
Dnieper-Berg  Canal  an  immense  ciuantity  of  timber  pur- 
chased for  _p<^30,ooo.  It  was  overtaken  by  the  frosts  of  winter 
and  remained  imbedded  in  the  ice.  The  company  were 
compelled  to  wait  till  spring,  and  meanwhile  their  agent, 
Herr  Kuntze,  came  up  periodically  to  inspect  it.  The  first 
time  he  saw  it  he  found  everything  in  order  ;  the  second 
visit  was  equally  satisfactory  ;  but  the  sight  that  met  his 
eyes  when  he  arrived  the  third  time  made  his  hair  stand  on 
end  :  the  timber,  he  found,  belonged  no  longer  to  his  com- 
l)any,  but  to  a  few  obscure  and  utterly  indigent  Russian 
Jews.  Herr  Kuntze  appealed  to  the  authorities,  consulted 
with  the  lawyers,  but  all  of  them  declared,  having  been 
made  acquainted  with  all  the  circumstances  of  the  case, 
that  the  timber  had  slipped  from  the  hands  of  the  Ikrlin 


1  Report  of  Agent  of  Ministry  of  Finances  in  London,  6lh  April,  1889. 
'-  Cf.  Kazan  Newsletter,  9th  November,  1887. 


DISHONESTY.  89 

Company  and  would  never  legally  return  to  them.  What 
happened  was  this  :  The  logs  being  marked  13.,  a  famished 
creature  named  Begoon  profited  by  the  accident  of  his 
name  also  beginning  with  that  letter.  He  simulated  a 
quarrel  with  a  beggar  friend,  to  whom  he  pretended  he 
owed  100,000  roubles.  They  referred  the  matter  to  a 
mock  arbiter,  and  then  asked  the  District  Court  to  enforce 
his  decision  —  namely,  that  B.'s  property  be  sold  and  the 
proceeds  given  to  his  creditor.  The  order  was  made  with 
unusual  promptitude  by  the  court,  and  the  creditor  havi;ig 
pointed  out  the  frozen  timber  as  portion  of  the  Jewish 
beggar's  property,  it  was  forthwith  sold  for  trifling  sums  to 
some  friends  of  the  two  starvelings. 

"  Ilerr  Kuntze  was  as  pale  as  a  sheet,"  says  the  sympathizing  pub- 
licist, "  his  advisers  excited,  and  the  Crown  lawyers  sympathetic,  but  as, 
according  to  our  law,  there  was  neither  crime  nor  criminal,  no  earthly 
power  could  avail  to  have  the  timber  restored.  One  issue  there  is,  and 
only  one:  Herr  Kuntze  might  take  a  civil  action  and  after  endless 
delays  might  obtain  judgment  against  the  paupers  for  ;^30,ooo  and 
costs;  but  then  he  himself,  found  guilty  of  injuring  the  reputation  of 
Begoon  and  his  friends,  who  are  legally  innocent  of  any  crime,  would 
have  to  go  to  prison  in  consequence."  ^ 

Fraudulent  bankruptcy  is  as  much  a  recognized  institution 
in  Russian  trade  as  credit,  the  Russians  belonging  to  that 
class  of  persons  whom  Sir  Philip  Sidney  described  as  "delight- 
ing more  in  giving  of  presents  than  in  paying  their  debts." 
Most  traders  look  upon  it  as  the  haven  of  safety  into  which 
they  may  run  from  stress  of  hard  times  ;  and  even  creditors, 
whose  point  of  view  is  naturally  quite  different,  regard  it  as 
a  necessary  evil  and  treat  defiiulting  debtors  accordingly. 
Thus  it  happens  that  a  man  who  has  performed  what  he 
deems  his  duty  to  himself  and  family  by  deliberately  refus- 
ing to  pay  his  creditors  more  than  a  few  pence  in  the  pound, 
sets  up  in  business  the  day  after  it  has  been  accepted,  and  is 
soon  again  trusted  for  consitlerable  sums  by  those  very  per- 
sons whom  he  lately  victimized.  Thus  some  time  ago  a  man 
named  Liever  —  a  wholesale  colonial  merchant  —  suddenly 
disappeared  just  when  pay  day  arrived  and  his  creditors  sent 
in  their  bills.  It  was  supposed  that  he  had  been  foully  mur- 
dered or  had  met  with  an  accidental  death.  As  it  turned 
out  afterwards,  he  was  taking  his  ease  at  one  of  the  railway 
stations,  whence  he  opened  negotiations  with  a  view  to  bring 

1  The  Week  {Niedielya),  27th  August,  1889;  Novoye  Vremya,  28th 
August,  1889. 


90  RUSSIAN   TRAITS   AND   TERRORS. 

about  an  amicable  arrangement  with  his  creditors,  and  when 
satisfactory  results  rewarded  his  perspicacity  and  dui)licity, 
he  returned  to  Odessa  and  began  anew.  That  this  did  not 
hinder  him  from  receiving  credit  again  is  plain  from  the 
statement  of  the  Afosa>7a  Gazette  that  he  had  just  failed  once 
more  for  one  hundred  thousand  roubles.^ 

It  would  require  a  volume  rather  than  a  review  article  to 
convey  anything  like  an  adequate  idea  of  the  singular 
methods  employed  by  Russian  merchants  to  supplement  the 
proverbial  slowness  and  meagreness  of  trade  profits.  They 
would  seem  to  exhaust  the  possibilities  of  naivete  and  crimi- 
nality, nothing  being  too  grotescpie,  nothing  too  dangerous 
to  tempt  their  cupidity.  A  well-known  merchant  of  Kieff 
thought  it  merely  a  clever  stroke  of  policy  to  bribe  all  the 
telegraph  messengers  to  bring  him  every  telegram  addressed 
to  the  business  men  in  whose  speculations  he  was  interested. 
lie  paid  one  rouble  per  telegram,  and  having  read,  copied, 
and  resealed  them,  he  sent  them  to  the  consignees  and  used 
the  information  thus  acquired  for  his  own  ends.  He  profited 
by  this  trustworthy  source  of  information  for  two  years,  and 
would  probably  have  continued  to  profit  by  it  till  his  death, 
had  the  conspiracy  not  been  discovered  —  by  the  merest 
accident."  The  Exchange  Committee  of  Odessa — a  body 
of  men  obliged  by  the  trusted  position  which  they  occupy  to 
be  above  all  considerations  of  a  sordid  nature — was  found 
to  quote  the  fluctuations  of  Russian  funds  so  inaccurately  as 
to  cause  bitter  complaints  to  be  made  by  the  press  as  well 
as  by  the  representatives  of  commerce.  A  year  and  a-half 
ago  an  official  request  was  addressed  to  the  persons  respon- 
sible reminding  them  that  their  duty  is  "  to  announce  the 
(juotations  correctly,  irrespective  of  the  consideration  ivhether 
anybody's  interests  are  affected  thereby.''  ^  "  The  main  evil 
of  Russian  society,"  says  one  of  the  Government  organs, 
"  is  that  it  suffers  from  complete,  absolute  dissoluteness,  rec- 
ognizes no  moral  discipline,  and  has  practically  emancipated 
itself  from  duty."*  At  the  trial  of  a  railway  servant  for 
robbery,  the  prisoner  —  as  is  usual  in  such  cases  —  confessed 
the  facts  rather  than  his  guilt,  and  stated  frankly  as  a  thing  of 
course  that  all  the  railway  servants  robbed,  and  that  robbery 

1  Moscoiv  Gazette,  2nd  February,  1888.     For  another  curious  case,  see 
Novoye  Vrevtya,  ist  March,  1889. 
■^  Kieff  Word,  17th  April,  1888. 

8  Odessa  newspapers  passim,  loth,  nth,  12th  June,  1888. 
*  Graschdanin,  6th  October,  1889. 


DISHONESTY.  QI 

was  thoroughly  organized  along  the  line,  some  stealing  only 
manufactured  goods,  others  leather  wares,  and  others  again 
corn,  and  so  on,  the  rules  of  honor  forbidding  those  who 
devoted  themselves  to  the  robbery  of  one  species  of  prop- 
erty to  encroach  upon  the  domain  of  the  others.' 

The  universality  of  these  lax  views  of  the  rights  of  prop- 
erty, which  in  Russians  are  not  identical  with  what  we  are 
wont  to  understand  by  criminal  dishonesty,  explains,  though 
it  does  not  justify,  the  feeling  at  one  time  freely  expressed 
by  the  Austrian  and,  I  believe,  German  press,  that  certain 
of  the  official  representatives  of  the  Empire  must  be  as  typ- 
ical of  the  shortcomings  of  their  countrymen  as  they  obvi- 
ously are  of  their  good  points.  Now  such  vague  and  general 
arguments  are  apt  to  break  down  when  subjected  to  serious 
criticism,  and  should  never  have  been  relied  upon  to  support 
the  sweeping  accusations  brought,  for  instance,  against  the 
present  Minister  of  Finance,  especially  by  the  Austrian  press, 
which  reproduced  strange  rumors,  dragged  long-forgotten 
stories  to  light,  and  vamped  up  old  anecdotes  verified  by  no 
one,  as  soon  as  his  nomination  to  the  post  he  occupies  was 
made  known.  The  circumstances  that  M.  Vyshnegradsky 
rose  from  the  ranks  like  many  great  and  good  men,  that 
pedagogy,  his  calling,  is  one  of  the  least  remunerative  in 
Russia,  that  he  changed  irksome  poverty  into  abundant 
riches  rapitUy,  mysteriously,  as  by  a  magician's  wand  or  an 
Aladdin's  lamp,  have  no  direct  bearing  on  the  question. 
Nor  are  the  most  circumstantial  stories  of  shady  practices 
conclusive  evidence  in  Russia,  where  a  good  name  is  as 
superfluous  as  the  qualities  elsewhere  needed  to  acquire  it. 
More  important  than  all  this,  though  not  by  any  means  a 
clinching  argument,  is  the  undeniable  fact  that  some  years 
ago  the  doors  of  certain  of  the  ministries  were  ignominiously 
closed  to  the  man  who  now  represents  the  finances  of  the 
Empire.  I  am  personally  acquainted  with  high  officials 
who,  without  laying  claim  to  exclusive  or  singular  integrity, 
felt  it  incumbent  upon  them  to  deny  him  admittance  to  the 
departments  under  their  direction,  in  the  interests  of  the 
Government,  its  servants,  and  public  integrity.  Whatever 
species  or  degree  of  commercial  cleverness  this  fact  may 
imply  is  all  that  this  writer  can,  with  justice  and  truth,  allow 
to  be  imputed  to  the  present  Minister  of  Finance. 

These  things,  which  need  no  commentary,  throw  a  light  on 

1  Novoye  Vremya,  26th  November,  1888. 


92  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

the  manners  and  maxims  of  the  Russian  i")eoplc,  which,  were 
it  not  the  (hrect  outcome  of  uncHsi^uted  facts,  would  seem  too 
lurid  to  be  credible  to  any  but  their  staunchest  friends  or 
most  malignant  enemies.  Nothing  less  convincing  than  a 
knowledge  of  these  and  similar  facts  —  which  are  legion 
—  could  hinder  an  unprejudiced  foreigner  from  largely 
discounting  such  sweeping  statements  as  those  made  by 
Professor  Kitarry,  who  in  his  lectures  on  commerce  thus 
characterizes  his  countrymen  :  "  Extortion  and  fraud  have 
become  the  flesh  and  blood  of  the  Russian  trading  class  — 
to  such  an  extent  indeed,  that  an  honest  man  cannot  retnain 
in  that  calling  ;  he  will  be  inevitably  seduced  in  the  long  run, 
and  little  by  little  will  himself  become  a  model  for  others."  ' 
One  of  the  latest  of  many  curious  exemplifications  of  the 
second  portion  of  this  assertion  occurred  a  few  months  ago, 
when  the  salt  of  the  earth,  as  it  were,  lost  its  savor.  No  one 
needs  to  be  told  that  no  more  honest  people  than  the  Finns 
breathe  the  air  of  Europe.  Yet  the  Russian  Press  unani- 
mously informs  us  that  the  exemplary  Finnish  Railway  Com- 
l)any  of  St.  Petersburg-Halsingfors  has  lately  been  detected 
using  false  weights  for  the  purpose  of  cheating  the  public 
who  forward  goods  by  that  line,  and  that  up  to  the  time  of 
the  discovery,  last  April,  they  had  succeeded  in  thus  wrong- 
fully appropriating  30,000  roubles.^  So  true  is  it  that,  as 
the  Arabic  proverb  expresses  it,  he  who  passes  through  the 
onions  or  their  peel  will  surely  smell  of  them. 

At  the  same  time  it  should  be  remembered  that  there  are 
whole  communities  in  Russia,  religious  bodies  separated 
from  the  Orthodox  Church,  but  composed  of  genuine 
Russians,  which  are  characterized  to  a  man  by  the  strictest 
integrity,  whose  word  is  a  bond,  and  whose  commercial 
dealings  with  their  fellow-men  are  dictated  by  jirofound 
respect  for  the  altruistic  precepts  and  coTinsel  of  the  Oospel. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  so-called  Sarepia  BrotJierhood, 
whose  head-quarters  are  in  the  Volga  district,  and  who  do  a 
large  business  in  St.  Petersburg  in  the  mustard,  yarn,  and 
woollen  trades.  These  people  are  to  Russia,  in  respect  of 
honesty  and  single-mindedness,  exactly  what  the  Society  of 
Friends  was  and  still  is  to  England  and  America.  The  same 
thing  may  be  said    of  the  thousands,  nay,  of  the  tens  of 

1  Memoir  presented  to  the  Minister  of  the  Interior  by  order  of  his  Majesty 
the  Emperor  concerninj^  the  Jeioish  Question,  p.  33. 

'^  St.  Petersburg  Leaflet,  12th  April,  1889;  A'ovoye  Vremya,  13th  April, 
1889 ;   Graschdanin,  19th  April,  1889,  etc. 


DISHONESTY.  93 

thousands  of  sectarians,  called  Molokani,  Stundists,  Pashko- 
vitcs,  behind  whose  yea  and  nay  one  need  never  trouble  to 
intrude,  and  to  whose  promise  alone  one  may  tender  a 
receipt.  To  trade  with  such  men  is  a  genuine  pleasure,  and 
to  proclaim  their  existence  —  which  is  little  less  than  heroic 
in  Russia  —  a  highly  agreeable  duty. 

No  man  with  the  interests  of  humanity  at  heart  will  hear 
without  profound  regret,  be  he  Christian  or  Atheist,  tliat  the 
religion  which  has  effected  this  almost  miraculous  change  in 
the  Russian  character  is  systematically  proscribed  and  per- 
secuted by  the  Government.  Fortunately,  Russian  laws, 
which  are  calculated  to  render  life  an  intolerable  burden,  are 
not  generally  obeyed  nor  strictly  enforced.  The  peojjle, 
adopting  Frederick  the  Great's  magnanimity  towards  the 
press,  would  say  of  their  Government,  that  "  it  may  say  and 
write  what  it  likes,  on  condition  that  we  do  what  we  like," 
and  thus  religious  sects  founded  on  the  Gospel  of  Christ  are 
rapidly  increasing,  and  with  them  the  number  of  men  and 
women  who  put  honesty  above  sordid  gain  and  the  momen- 
tary gratification  of  petty  malice. 

Chief  among  the  oases  of  honesty  consisting  of  Dissenters, 
naturalized  foreigners,  Russians  educated  abroad,  and  others, 
one  naturally  expects  to  find  the  intellectual  class  of  the  pop- 
ulation, the  natural  Pillars  of  Society.  Russia,  however,  is 
the  country  of  surprises,  and  even  these  leaders  of  men, 
when  weighed  in  the  balances,  are  found  sadly  wanting. 
Thus,  one  of  the  best  known  litterateurs  in  Russia,  a  frank, 
wordy  writer-  of  independent  judgment,  whose  name  at 
times  is  not  unknown  to  some  of  the  readers  of  the  Fort- 
nii:;Jitly  Review,  owes  his  first  introduction  to  the  Republic 
of  Letters  to  a  daring  theft  which  he  committed  on  one  of 
its  presidents.  As  for  the  representatives  of  the  Press,  no 
characteristic  of  them  which  satisfied  the  exigencies  of  truth 
would  fulfil  the  conditions  of  credibility  unless  the  grounds 
for  the  opinion  were  first  set  forth  in  detail.  The  most  pop- 
ular newspaper  in  Russia  is  the  Novoye  Vreiiiya,  and  its 
proprietor  and  irresponsible  editor,  M.  Suvorin,  has  with  im- 
punity been  made  the  subject  of  accusations  which  in  any 
other  country  would  either  brand  his  name  with  infamy  or 
send  his  accusers  to  prison.^     In  Russia  it  has  done  neither. 

1  Odessa  Messens;er,  22nd  February,  1887;  cf.  also  St.  Petersburg  No- 
vpsti,  February,  1887.  It  is  fair  to  say  tiiat  personally  I  believe  that  if  the 
case  were  tried  in  a  Russian  court  of  justice,  M.  Suvorin  would  be  unhesi- 
tatingly acquitted  of  the  charge. 


94  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

The  following  illustration  of  the  honesty  of  scientific  men 
is  too  suggestive  to  be  withheld.  The  eighth  edition  of  a 
complete  Dictionary  of  115,000  foreign  words  incorporated 
into  the  Russian  language  was  lately  published  in  St.  Peters- 
burg. A  gentleman  bought  it  and  counted  the  words. 
There  were  only  20,681,  or  less  than  one-sixth  of  the 
promised  number  !  He  then  continued  his  researches  into 
the  history  of  the  work,  comjiiled  by  MM.  Bourdon  and 
Michelsohn,  and  dragged  the  following  curious  focts  into  the 
light  of  day.  All  the  editions  of  this  precious  dictionary, 
which  is  the  standard  work  on  the  subject,  are  revised  and 
enlarged.  It  came  out  in  1873  for  the //.v/"  time  as  ihe  fifth 
edition,  promising  the  explanation  of  30,000  words  for  2^ 
roubles.  A  year  later  the  fourth  edition  was  published,  in 
which  32,000  words  were  said  to  be  etymologically  inter- 
preted for  the  same  ])rice.  In  1875  ^Iie  sixth  edition  ap- 
peared, and  the  price  was  reduced  to  if  roubles,  while 
the  number  of  words  remained  the  same.  In  1883  the 
ninth  edition  saw  the  light,  and  was  sold  for  4  roubles,  and 
finally  the  last  and  best  edition,  namely  the  eighth  (after 
the  ninth),  was  brought  out  in  1888,  in  which  115,000  words 
are  said  to  be  analyzed  and  explained  for  5  roubles,  whereas 
in  reality  only  one-sixth  of  the  promised  number  is  to  be 
found,  and  one-third  of  the  number  said  to  be  explained  in 
the  cheapest  edition  that  cost  but  if  roubles.^ 

Compared  with  such  extraordinary  doings,  plagiarism, 
far  from  unknown  even  in  Great  Britain,  sinks  to  the  level  of 
a  mere  peccadillo.  Still  Russian  plagiarism  would  seem  to 
belong  to  a  different  species  from  that  prevalent  in  other 
countries.  In  England,  for  instance,  the  thought,  ])assage, 
description  appropriated  without  acknowledgment,  but 
seldom  without  modification,  is  to  the  whole  work  in  which 
it  appears  as  a  dew-drop  to  the  ocean.  In  Russia  what- 
ever is  plagiarized  is  rarely  transformed,  being  usually 
offered,  with  its  merits  and  blemishes  just  as  it  stands,  for 
whatever  it  will  fetch  in  the  market.  In  1888  Dr.  Von 
Cyon,  late  Professor  of  Physiology  in  the  Medico-chirurgical 
Academy  of  St.  Petersburg,  antl  a  friend  of  the  late  M. 
Katkoff,  published  in  Berlin  a  complete  edition  of  his  works,^ 
among  which  is  to  be  found  an  interesting  research  on  the 
influence  of  change  of  temperature  upon  certain  nerves  of 


1  Novoye  Vremya,  loth  June,  1888,  etc. 

2  Gesavimelte  phyiiologische  Arbeiten  ;  Berlin,  1888;  pp.  138-143. 


DISHONESTY.  95 

the  heart,  written,  not  by  him,  bui  i)y  a  M.  Tarkhanoff.'  "  I 
do  not,"  says  the  real  author  in  a  letter  to  the  Press,  "set 
any  great  value  on  this  investigation  as  distinguishing  it  from 
my  other  scientific  works ;  but  I  have  no  right,  I  think,  to 
pass  over  this  act  of  Dr.  Cyon's  in  silence,  considering  its 
important  bearing  upon  the  picture  of  contemporary  scien- 
tific morals."-  A  similar  "accident"  happened  in  1889 
to  M.  Tolmakoff,  who,  according  to  the  AIoscow  Gazette, 
stole  exactly  ten-elevenths  of  his  dissertation  on  the  His- 
tory of  Apiculture?  Another  case  occurred  a  few  months 
previously  of  so  extraordinary  a  nature  that  some  of  the 
daily  newspapers  actually  alluded  to  it  in  anger.  "  The 
Russian  professor,"  says  the  Svett,  one  of  the  organs  of  the 
Slavonic  Society,  "  works  in  the  field  of  science  just  enough 
to  obtain  his  degrees,  to  seize  upon  comfortable  positions, 
lucrative  chairs,  and  remunerative  tuitions,  and  then  lives 
jovially  ever  after,  teaching  anything  and  anyhow.  Hence 
it  comes  to  pass  that,  although  our  universities  are  pro- 
vided with  hundreds  of  professors,  we  have  extremely  few 
genuine  workers  in  the  field  of  science.  Lately  a  revolting 
instance  of  this  exploitation  of  science  occurred  in  the  St. 
Petersburg  University."  It  then  goes  on  to  relate  how 
Professor  Morozoff  published  a  book  on  the  history  of  the 
Russian  drama,  the  best  portions  of  which  were  surrepti- 
tiously taken  from  the  rare  work  of  a  Moscow  professor, 
whose  name  he  deliberately  ignored.  P'or  this  production 
he  demanded  the  degree  of  Doctor,  and  was  on  the  point 
of  obtaining  it,  when  the  fraud  was  discovered.  "  What 
are  the  students  to  do  now?"  asks  the  journal  in  conclu- 
sion. "  Will  M.  Morozoff  remain  in  the  university,  as  pro- 
fessor, and  how  will  his  colleagues  look  upon  the  plagia- 
rism?"* Professor  Morozoff  has  remained  at  his  post,  and 
is  still  there,  contributing  according  to  his  lights  to  bring  up 
the  young  generation  in  the  way  they  should  go.  His  col- 
leagues are  mortal,  and  as  such  liable,  like  him,  to  err  ; 
"  instead  therefore  of  casting  the  first  stone  at  an  erring 
brother,"  one  of  them  said  to  me  in  conversation  at  the 
time,  "  each  of  us  can  say  with  a  feeling  of  humanity  — 

"  Nihil  humani  a  me  alienum  f'tdo." 


1  A^ovoye  Vrcmya,  January,  1888,  and  St. Petersburg  yoiirtial {R\xss\^n), 
25th  January,  1888.  '  -  Ibid. 

3  \\fpscozv  Gazette,  z,{h  August,  1889;   Novoye  Vremya,  ylh  August,  1889, 
■»  Svett,  ist  November,  1888. 


96  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

Russian  lawyers  as  a  body  have  not  the  shadow  of  a  claim 
to  be  considered  as  exceptions  to  the  general  rule  ;  they  are 
emphatically  of  their  age  and  country.  In  the  report  issued 
by  the  Council  of  the  St.  Petersburg  bar  for  the  year  ending 
in  March,  1888,  consisting  of  113  pages,  eighty-eight  are 
taken  up  with  the  enumeration  of  the  disciplinary  pains  and 
penalties  inflicted  en  faviille  upon  members  of  the  bar  for 
misconduct.  If  we  ask  in  what  this  misconduct  consists, 
the  report  answers  "  in  irregularities  in  money  matters  be- 
tween them  and  their  clients  ;  in  insults  offered  to  them, 
their  opponents,  their  colleagues  ;  in  the  breach  of  the  ])ro- 
fcssional  duties  of  a  lawyer ;  in  desertion  to  the  side  of  their 
clients'  opponents ;  in  acts  of  fraud,  such  as  abuse  of  con- 
fidence, operations  injurious  to  the  financial  interests  of  their 
clients'  creditors,"'  etc.,  etc.  I  translate  the  following  case, 
chosen  by  the  press  as  most  typical  of  these  reprehensible 
doings,  not  adding  a  word  nor  excising  an  expression  :  — 

"The  Liliau  Romensky  Railway  Company  were  condemned  to  pay 
M.  Z.  735  rouliles  damages  for  l)odily  injuries,  and  a  monthly  pension 
of  fifteen  roubles.  The  lawyer  appropriated  these  sums  to  his  own  use, 
on  which  the  client's  wife  appealed  to  another  lawyer,  M.,  entreating 
him  to  persuade  Z.  to  hand  over  the  sums  in  question.  M.  acquitted 
himself  of  this  mission  with  success,  but  as  it  was  afterwards  proved,  on 
the  hearing  of  Z.'s  suit,  knavishly  seized  upon  twenty  roubles  (;^2),his 
alleged  expenses  for  a  journey  to  Moscow —  a  journey  which  he  never 
made.  It  would  be  difficult  to  discover  a  sorrier  piece  of  fraud,  which 
not  even  every  salesman  would  perpetrate.  And  yet  the  Council  passed 
a  resolution  merely  to  administer  a  caution  to  this  petty  knave  among 
lawyers."  ^ 

The  following  scene  in  a  law  court  cannot  fail  to  prove 
interesting  to  English  readers,  as  characteristic  of  various 
things  and  jjcople  besides  Russian  lawyers  : — 

"A  lad  accused  of  stealing  a  cow  endeavored  tcj  secure  the  services 
of  a  lawyer  to  defend  him,  ami  in  the  course  of  the  negotiations  admit- 
ted that  he  did  commit  the  theft,  '  accidentally  somehow.'  The  lawyer 
named  the  fee  for  which  his  services  were  to  be  had,  and  higgled  with 
the  lad  a  long  time  before  they  both  agreed  upon  seventy-five  roubles 
(about  £']  los.).  The  day  of  the  trial  arrived.  The  accused  appeared 
in  court  guarded.  The  counsel  for  the  defence,  knowing  that- his  client 
was  heretofore  at  liberty,  was  somewhat  surprised  at  this,  but  accounted 
for  it  by  supposing  that  the  court  had  later  on  ordered  him  to  be  kept 
in  custody.  The  court,  however,  turning  to  the  prisoner,  asked,  '  Ac- 
cused, why  are  you  guarded?  '  '  I  was  caught  in  the  act  of  stealing. ' 
'  What !     Before  being  acquitted  of  one  theft  you  have  already  commit- 

1  Cf.  Novoye  Vremya,  loth  May,  1888. 

2  Novoye  V?-e»iya,  loth  May,  i888. 


DISHONESTY.  97 

ted  another?  '  '  What  was  I  to  do,  your  Excellency?  He  —  the  coun- 
sel, I  mean  —  demanded  seventy-five  roubles  for  defending  me.  Where 
was  I  to  get  this  money  from? '  "  ^ 

One  can  never  guard  too  carefully  against  the  strong 
temptation  to  generalize  with  which  every  writer  upon 
nations  and  classes  has  to  contend,  and  it  is  in  the  nature  of 
things  that  accusations  levelled  against  numerous  corpora- 
tions of  men  should  be  received  with  caution.  Here,  how- 
ever, it  is  not  a  question  of  accusing  individuals,  much  less 
whole  classes  of  men ;  if  anything,  it  is  rather  an  indirect 
attempt  to  excuse  them.  It  would  be  singularly  exceptional, 
however,  not  to  say  miraculous,  if  a  corporation,  recently 
and  accidentally  called  into  existence  in  a  society  which  has 
never  stratified  itself  like  other  European  communities, 
should  profess  and  practise  a  system  of  ethics  radically 
different  from  that  adopted  by  the  great  bulk  of  the  nation. 
The  facts  already  detailed  go  far  to  prove  the  truth  of  this 
thesis.  That  these,  of  which  they  are  but  a  specimen,  are 
equally  conclusive,  is  evident,  among  other  things,  from  the 
following  characteristic  of  Russian  lawyers  deliberately  given 
by  the  most  patriotic  (in  a  Pan-Russian  sense)  and  most 
popular  newspaper  in  the  Empire  :  — 

"  Perpetually  occupied  with  money  matters  and  financial  interests, 
though  completely  lacking  all  respectability  and  moral  footing,  the 
contemporary  jurisconsult  of  the  corporation  of  lawyers  falls  more 
quickly  than  a  prostitute  strolling  through  the  streets.  ...  In  need 
of  profitable  practice,  of  which  there  is  a  dearth  just  now,  the  modern 
jurist  makes  up  for  want  of  practice  either  by  masked  robbery,  the  levy- 
ing of  blackmail,  or  by  forgery  of  financial  documents."  - 

Magistrates,  who  in  Russia  discharge  certain  of  the  func- 
tions reserved  in  this  country  to  juclges,  are  on  the  whole 
the  most  high-principled  men  in  the  Empire.  Their  position 
is  as  difficult  as  a  suspicious  public,  a  distrustful  Government, 
exacting  and  unscrupulous  patrons,  and  frequent  penury  can 
make  it.  That  they  are  not  all  as  spotless  as  was  Andrew 
Marvell  under  greater  temptations,  is  natural ;  that  .so  many 
of  them  have  kept  clear  of  open  venality  deserves  far  more 
credit  than  it  has  heretofore  received.  The  following  sketch 
represents  one  of  those  magistrates  who  scorn  to  lay  them- 
selves open  to  the  charge  of  corruption,  and   yet  in  the 

1  Diary  of  Saratoff,  November,  1887;  also  Novoye  Vretnya,  12th  Novem- 
ber, 1878. 

2  Novoye  V'reniya,  30th  August,  1889. 


98  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

interest  of  self-preservation  would  fain  act  upon  the  proverb 
which  says  that  "  Unless  you  stoop,  you  cannot  gather 
mushrooms."  It  is  taken  from  a  St.  Petersburg  Govern- 
ment journal :  — 

"  A  day  never  passes  that  this  magistrate's  district  vassals  do  not 
bring  in  their  offerings.  But  Ivan  Ycroffeitch  ^  is  guided  in  such  cases 
by  thorough  disinterestedness.  For  instance,  a  peasant  brings  him  a 
wether.  The  magistrate  exclaims  proudly,  '  I  accept  nothing  gratis. 
Sophia  (to  the  housekeeper),  pay  him  4-^1.'  Ten  ducks  are  presented 
to  him,  and  he  instructs  his  Sophia  to  pay  3d.,  and  the  transaction  is 
blameless  in  the  eye  of  the  law."  2 

In  the  Kratoyaksky  district  (government  of  Kharkoff)  the 
entire  Court  of  Appeal  was  brought  up  for  trial  some  time 
ago  on  a  charge  —  which  was  substantiated  in  court  —  of 
organizing  trumpery  cases  against  the  railway  company, 
drilling  the  witnesses  and  inducing  them  to  commit  perjury, 
and  on  the  basis  of  that  evidence  pronouncing  unjust 
judgments  against  innocent  persons  of  means,  for  the  sake 
of  a  paltry  two  hundred  pounds  to  be  divided  among  all  the 
members  of  this  numerous  conspiracy.''  M.  Franzia,  magis- 
trate of  the  Ooglitch,  who  is  also  a  publican,  had  no  scruple 
to  prosecute  a  rival  publican,  for  some  imaginary  offence, 
and  to  try  the  case  himself.  The  depositions  of  the  wit- 
nesses, although  favorable  to  the  prisoner,  did  not  prevent 
this  publican-judge  and  plaintiff  from  condemning  his  rival 
to  three  months'  imprisonment,  or  from  artfully  compelling 
him  to  sign  a  document  in  which  he  waives  his  right  to 
appeal.'*  M.  Volkoff,  President  of  the  Court  of  Appeal  of 
the  first  instance,  in  Vinnitsa  (government  of  Podolia)  made 
a  profession  of  selling  justice  —  or  injustice — to  the  highest 
bidders.  His  secretary  kept  by  him  a  sheaf  of  receipt  forms 
for  loans,  ready  signed,  and  whenever  a  lawsuit  arose  that 
seemed  to  give  promise  of  profits,  this  gentleman  would  call 
on  one  of  the  two  parties,  and  having  received  what  he  con- 
sidered a  fair  sum  of  money,  would  write  a  receipt  for  it 
then  and  there,  setting  forth  the  date  and  the  sum  received. 
In  spite  of  these  and  innumerable  other  instances,  however, 
it  would  be  impossible  to  find  a  less  corrupt  body  of  men 
in  Russia,  and  in  seeking  the  explanation  of  this  curious 

1  An  imaginary  name,  but  a  real  person. 

2  Graschdaniii,  29th  August,  1888.  * 

8  Novoye  Vremya,  5th  December,  1888.     Cf.  also  Svett,  12th  December, 
1888. 

4  St,  Petersburg  Russian  Journal,  gist  October,  1887, 


DISHONESTY.  99 

phenomenon,  it  would  be  extremely  ungracious  to  lay  too 
much  stress  on  the  abject  poverty  of  the  vast  majority  of 
suitors  in  the  magisterial  courts  or  on  the  indifference  of  the 
press  to  any  but  the  most  signal  cases  of  glaring  corruption. 

The  reputation  of  the  rural  courts  for  integrity  leaves  far 
more  to  be  desired  than  that  of  the  magistrates'  courts, 
though  even  here  the  scale  of  judicial  decisions  is  conducted 
with  a  certain  rude  dignity  which  excludes  that  higgling  and 
bargaining  which  is  of  the  essence  of  all  commercial  trans- 
actions in  Russia.  "  In  the  public-house,"  says  the  Grasch- 
danin,  "justice  is  administered,  or  rather  sold,  and  the 
court  purchased.  .  .  .  Ifyou  have  recourse  to  the  rural  court 
without  treating  the  judge  to  vodka,  were  your  case  incarnate 
justice  and  as  spotless  a^  the  driven  snow,  it  will  become  as 
black  as  a  coal.  Right  will  be  found  on  the  side  of  the  gal- 
lon of  spirits."  ^ 

It  may  be  permissible  to  apply  to  the  Courts  of  Orphans 
in  Russia  the  strong  but  well- merited  epithets  used  of  the 
house  of  prayer  in  Jerusalem,  and  describe  them  as  dens  of 
thieves.  The  thefts  committed  in  the  Orphans'  Courts, 
however,  are  explicable,  excusable,  almost  justifiable  ;  they 
are  certainly  quite  as  much  a  constituent  part  of  the  sal- 
ary of  the  officials  as  pourboires  are  of  the  perquisites  of 
the  unsalaried  waiters  in  large  Continental  hotels.  The 
head  of  a  department,  for  instance,  whose  office  is  perma- 
nent, who  gives  all  his  time  to  the  work,  and  is  practically 
precluded  from  seeking  other  sources  of  incomes,  receives 
a  very  paltry  salary  for  one  through  whose  hands  pass  hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  roubles  yearly,  and  who  is  compelled 
to  pay  fancy  prices  for  food,  lodging,  fire-wood,  etc.  This 
salary  is  8s.  a  month.  His  assistants  receive  about  4s.,  all 
told.  No  one  will  therefore  be  surprised  to  hear  that  these 
paltry  shillings  are  made  to  go  as  far  as  the  loaves  and  fishes 
of  the  Gospel  miracle  ;  they  purchase  comfortable  lodgings, 
excellent  board  and  clothing  for  a  numerous  family.  Govern- 
ment scrip,  country  houses,  and  a  competence  in  old  age." 

No  boy  can  pass  through  any  of  the  Government  gram- 
mar schools,  or  such  high  schools  as  the  Lycaeum,  I-aw 
School,  or  Corps  des  Payes,  without  purchasing  the  goodwill 
of  his   masters   and  frequently  of  his   directors.     I   know 

1  Cf.,  also  Svett,  20th  March,  1889,  in  which  the  curious  ways  of  selling 
justice  in  open  court  are  described. 

-  Cf.  for  instance,  Graschdanin,  25th  January,  1889,  This,  however,  is  a 
notorious  fact,  admitting  of  no  manner  of  doubt. 


lOO 


RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 


scores  of  children  whose  parents  pay  yearly  bribes  to  a  lit- 
tle army  of  pedagogues,  and  I  am  acquainted  with  some 
parents  who  will  never  cease  to  rue  the  day  when  they 
resolved  to  set  their  faces  against  it.  The  Russian  army  has 
been  praised  by  all  the  nations  of  the  world,  and  deservedly 
so,  and  yet  mere  knowledge  can  no  more  (qualify  you  to  pass 
the  examination  for  a  commission  than  an  Englishman's 
abstract  right  to  become  a  member  of  Parliament  can  pro- 
cure him  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons.  A  friend  of 
mine,  whose  intellectual  gifts  were  as  brilliant  as  his  means 
were  limited,  set  about  entering  the  army  a  few  years  ago. 
He  proposed  to  pass  his  examination  loyally,  not  to  pur- 
chase immunity  —  to  imitate  Arago,  whose  profound  knowl- 
edge compelled  the  respect  of  hostile  examiners.  He  con- 
fided his  intention  to  a  friend  of  his,  who  was  an  officer  and 
an  examiner,  from  whom,  however,  he  received  but  cold 
comfort.  No  exception,  he  was  told,  could  be  made  in  his 
case,  the  utmost  he  could  expect  was  to  receive  a  consiaer- 
able  reduction  in  the  prices.  He  was  presented  with  the 
tariff  containing  these  reductions,  the  literal  translation  of 
which  is  as  follows  :  —  ^ 


Subjects. 


Price. 
Roubles. 


Price. 
Roubles. 


Subjects. 

History  2 

Chemistry^ 

Christian  doctrine    ...       6o 

Statistics  * 

Mathematics 200 

Foreign  languages^  . 

Signature 


Artillery 300 

Fortification 200 

Tactics 200 

Topography 150 

Administration     ....  25 

Military  Law 250 

Trigonometrical  survey       .  25 

Russian  language  ^   ...  — 

Far  more  significant,  however,  than  whole  volumes  of 
illustrative  instances  is  the  view  taken  of  them  by  public 
opinion.  Is  dishonesty  indignantly  condemned?  are  those 
guilty  of  it  rigorously  excluded  from  such  society  as  there 
is,  their  names  gibbeted  as  a  warning  to  others,  and  the 
application  of  legal  pains  and  penalties  applauded  ?     Or  do 


1  The  original  of  this  //az/document  is  in  the  possession  of  the  editor  of 
the  Fortnightly  Rkvirw. 

2  As  the  teachers  of  these  subjects  were  not  military  men,  special  arrange- 
ments had  to  be  made  with  them. 

3  The  examiner  in  chemistry  was  above  bribery,  nothing  but  genuine 
knowledge  passing  current  with  him.  He  made  many  heroic  —  and  almost 
Quixotic  —  efforts  to  suppress  the  bribery  system  ;  but  it  would  have  been 
as  feasible  to  suppress  autocracy  itself. 

*  For  statistics  nothing  was  demanded  but  an  inkling  of  the  subject, 


DISHONESTY.  lOI 

people  look  upon  such  offenders  with  pity  tinctured  with 
that  selfish  hoiUc-tibi-cras-viihi  foreboding  with  which  old 
men  receive  the  news  of  the  death  even  of  a  stranger? 
Public  opinion  is  practically  non-existent  in  Russia.  As  the 
Empress  Catherine  truly  observed  to  Princess  Dashkoff  in 
one  of  Lander's  I/nagindry  Conversations,  "  Russia  has  no 
more  voice  than  a  whale."  Still  such  unmistakable  indica- 
tions as  do  exist  leave  no  doubt  whatever  that  the  average 
Russian  is  unconscious  of  anything  criminal  in  dishonesty 
and  double-dealing,  and  would  feel  it  a  hardship  were  he 
hindered  from  indulging  therein.  In  a  former  paper  we 
saw  that  robbery,  aggravated  by  burglary  and  envenomed 
with  the  worst  kind  of  ingratitude,  was  treated  by  the  victim 
as  a  sort  of  practical  joke  which  could  not  be  permitted  to 
come  between  him  and  his  friendship  for  the  thief.  We 
have  seen  that  the  public  press  and  the  authorities  have 
nothing  worse  than  a  good-natured  smile  for  the  story  of 
wholesale  robberies  committed  by  the  Courts  of  Orphans, 
as  long  as  they  do  not  attain  the  dimensions  of  a  national 
scandal ;  and  we  have  also  seen  that  the  Council  of  the  Bar 
of  St.  Petersburg  considered  a  fraternal  caution  punishment 
enough  for  a  colleague  guilty  of  embezzlement  under  cir- 
cumstances which  in  this  country  would  have  caused  him  to 
be  speedily  disbarred  by  the  benchers  and  imprisoned  by 
the  magistrates.  The  annals  of  every  Russian  court  of  jus- 
tice abound  in  similar  instances.  A  postman  burns  thou- 
sands of  letters  in  the  course  of  several  years  for  the  sake 
of  the  few  stamps  he  steals  from  them.  He  is  arrested, 
tried,  and  he  confesses.  But  the  jury  acquit  him.  In 
1888  T.  Tschentsoff,  a  lackey  in  whom  his  master  had  un- 
bounded confidence,  realized  his  reputation  for  honesty 
by  abstracting  at  various  times  during  the  twelvemonth 
30,000  roubles,  and  losing  them  at  a  card-table  in  one  of 
the  clubs.  He  was  tried  on  the  4th  of  April  of  the  follow- 
ing year,  when  he  pleaded  guilty,  confessing  the  details  of  the 
theft.  Yet  the  jury  found  him  innocent.'  On  the  26th  of 
June,  1889,  in  the  enlightened  city  of  Kieff,  a  woman  was  tried 
for  robbery.  The  case  was  simplicity  itself.  She  had  been 
arrested  red-handed,  with  the  objects  in  her  possession. 
She  was  known,  moreover,  to  be  a  notorious  professional 
thief.     Yet  the  jury  saw  so  little  that  was  reprehensible  in 


1  Graschdanin,  5th  April,   1889;    cf.  also  other  Petersburg  newspapers 
of  same  date. 


102  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

her  acts,  that  they  unhesitatingly  declared  her  innocent.  In 
Odessa  another  woman,  also  accused  of  theft  under  circum- 
stances that  left  no  loophole  of  a  pretext,  and  upon  evidence 
that  no  body  of  men  outside  Russia  would  refuse  to  con- 
vict upon,  was  as  unhesitatingly  acquitted  by  the  jury.' 

An  equally  clear  indication  is  afforded  by  the  press  and 
the  morals  of  its  most  accredited  and  trusted  representa- 
tives, which  must  necessarily  seem  inexplicable  to  those 
Europeans  who  treat  journalism  as  a  priesthood,  requiring 
a  special  vocation  and  calling  into  play  the  noblest  ([uahties 
of  head  and  heart.  Such  persons'  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
things  must  receive  a  very  severe  shock  at  the  thought  that 
a  vulgar  thief,  who  emerges  from  the  cells  of  a  filthy  prison, 
where  for  a  twelvemonth  he  has  herded  with  the  scum  of  the 
earth,  at  once  joins  the  ranks  of  this  modern  priesthood,  is 
received  with  open  arms,  and  forthwith  sets  about  minister- 
ing to  the  spiritual  wants  of  his  fellow-men,  letting  that  light 
shine  before  them  which  was  so  long  under  the  bushel  of  a 
prison.  In  Russia  such  a  spectacle  is  neither  striking  nor 
incongruous.  Nay,  such  a  journalist  is  as  great  a  stickler 
for  his  honor  as  if  he  were  a  spotless  Bayard. 

"The  correspondent  of  the  Odessa  ATesscnger  at  Orgheieff,  we  read, 
S.  Goldberg,  described  as  having  been  frequently  tried  and  found  guilty 
of  theft,  is  about  to  enter  an  action  [ox  libel  against  the  editor  of  the 
N'ew  Russian  Telegraph.  M.  Goldberg  is  desirous  of  proving  publicly 
that  he  did  not  steal  the  goloshes  of  M.  Trikolitch,  and  that  he  was  not 
frequently  found  guilty  of  theft,  but  only  once,  for  which  he  was  im- 
prisoned for  eleven  months  and  twenty  days.  Moreover,  M.  Goldberg 
threatens  to  i)ublish  a  series  of  letters  in  his  organ,  the  Odessa  Messen- 
ger, to  show  that  he  was  on  the  staff  not  only  of  the  Messenger  and  of 
the  Neiv  Russian  Telegraph,  but  also  of  several  other  journals."  - 

Now,  if  this  were  an  isolated  fact,  it  would  nevertheless 
imply  a  degree  of  ethical  slovenliness  in  the  representatives 
of  the  Russian  press  which  could  scarcely  co-exist  with  the 
general  prevalence  in  the  nation  of  universally  accepted 
views  of  morality.  But  it  is  not  an  isolated  fact,  but  one  of 
daily  occurrence.  Another  journal  published  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, discussing  the  morality  of  the  Russian  press  and  the 
antecedents  of  its  representative  men,  remarks,  "  There  are 
vast  numbers  of  cases  in  which  the  editor  is  perfectly  well 
aware  that  a  certain  member  of  his  staff  is  a  thorough-going 

1  Odessa  papers  of  the  15th  October,  1887. 

2  Graschdanin,  25th  January,  1888. 


DISHONESTY.  I03 

rascal."  "Why  do  you  not  dismiss  him?"  you  ask.  "  He 
is  a  man  of  talents,"  you  are  answered.  "  But  he  is  not  an 
honest  man,"  you  insist.  "What's  that  to  me!  I  am  not 
going  to  baptize  children  with  him."  ^ 

Nothing  is  more  significant,  however,  than  the  manner  in 
which  courts  of  justice  condone,  if  they  do  not  positively 
encourage,  theft.  We  have  seen  with  what  indulgence 
Russian^ jurors  treat  it,  as  if  they  feared  that  this  precious 
national  characteristic  were  in  danger  of  disappearing,  and 
that  their  sacred  duty  was  to  preserve  and  develop  it.  The 
following  instance  took  place  in  a  court  where  there  are  no 
jurors,  but  only  judges.  Two  young  men  of  sixteen  and 
seventeen  years  of  age  broke  into  a  village  shop  one  night 
and  abstracted  cakes,  sweetmeats,  nuts,  and  liquors,  to  the 
value  of  about  15s.  to  i6s.  Part  of  the  good  things  they 
consumed  themselves,  the  remainder  they  hid  away  in  the 
hay,  bringing  them  forth  when  occasion  required,  to  treat 
the  lads  and  lasses.  When  brought  to  trial  the  president  of 
the  court  asked  them  if  they  admitted  the  charge.  They 
replied  affirmatively.  He  then  inquired  whether  they  were 
possessed  of  sweet  teeth.  They  laughed  heartily,  repeating 
the  words  "  sweet  teeth."     They  were  then  acquitted." 

It  may  be  urged  that  some  allowance  must  be  made  in 
such  cases  for  Russia  as  a  country  that  has  not  yet  succeeded 
in  shaking  off  the  moral  and  intellectual  fetters  of  barbarism, 
as  a  community  holding  views  upon  many  questions  of  ethics 
as  of  politics  diametrically  opposed  to  those  of  European 
nations,  and  that  under  such  peculiar  circumstances  this 
indulgent  way  of  treating  thieves,  this  justice  that:  comes 
disguised  in  the  form  of  encouragement  may,  after  all,  be 
productive  of  better  effects  upon  men  who  are  not  malicious 
criminals  than  the  cast-iron  rigor  of  the  cut-and-dried  law 
of  the  West.  All  this  may  be  granted  —  must  indeed  be 
granted,  seeing  that  it  is  vouched  for  by  undisputed  facts ; 
but  then  this  is  but  another  way  of  declaring  the  level  of 
Russian  morality,  in  the  matter  of  honest  dealing,  of  veracity 
in  action,  to  be  several  degrees  lower  than  that  of  the  rest 
of  the  civilized  world. 

Nor  can  it  be  suggested  that  the  juries  who  thus  freely 
scatter  certificates  of  morality,  the  judges  who  pass  off  rob- 
bery and  burglary  as  a  joke,  the  corporations  and  editors 


1  Minute,  23rd  October,  1887.     Odessky  Listok,  29th  October,  1887. 

2  Northern  Messenger,  January,  1889,  p.  43. 


104  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

who  amicably  associate  with  thieves,  would  modify  their 
views,  if  they  themselves  had  directly  suffered  from  the  dis- 
honesty of  those  whom  they  thus  take  under  their  protec- 
tion. Such  personal  considerations  would  not  be  permitted 
to  have  the  slightest  weight  in  modifying  conceptions  that 
are  universal  forms  of  thought  rather  than  the  result  of  a 
chain  .of  reasoning.  Of  a  hundred  persons  who  have  been 
robbed  in  Russia,  though  all  might  be  equally  eager  to 
recover  their  stolen  property,  no  more  than  twenty,  if  indeed 
so  many,  would  wish  to  see  the  thief  punished ;  and  only 
very  few  even  of  these  would  go  to  the  trouble  of  actively 
contributing  to  the  realization  of  this  object.  They  prefer 
to  curse  the  thief,  wave  their  hand  fatalistically,  and  continue 
their  way  as  before. 

"  In  Saratoff  on  the  Volga,"  says  an  eyewitness,  "  the  steamer  Alex- 
ander II.  was  about  to  start.  It  was  crowded  with  passengers.  All 
the  first  and  second  class  tickets  were  sold,  and  in  the  third  class  there 
was  no  room  for  an  apple  to  fall;  the  passengers,  so  to  say,  sat  upon 
each  other.  After  the  first  whistle  the  assistant  cajitain,  hurrying 
through  the  crowds  of  third  class  passengers,  was  suddenly  stopped  by 
a  peasant.  '  Your  honor,  the  money  has  been  found,'  he  said.  '  Found  ! 
Where?'  'Sewed  up  in  that  soldier's  mantle.  'I  went  over  there  to 
search  for  it,  and  sure  enough  there  were  forty-one  roubles  and  a 
twenty-copeck  piece,'  said  the  peasant,  brandishing  a  chamois-leather 
purse  as  if  it  were  a  war  trophy.  '  Where's  that  soldier?'  'There  he 
is,  asleep.'  '  Well,  he  must  be  handed  over  to  the  police.'  '  Handed 
over  to  the  police !  Why  to  the  police?  Christ  be  with  him.  Don't 
touch  him,  let  him  sleep  on,'  he  repeated  naively,  good-naturedly  add- 
ing, 'the  money  is  found;   it's  all  there.'     And  so  the  matter  ended."  ^ 

But  this  perversion  of  moral  sense  is  considerably  empha- 
sized \\4ien  transferred  from  the  offender's  person  to  paper. 
The  Russian  is  so  hearty,  so  good-humored,  so  intensely 
human,  that  dishonesty  seems  in  his  hands  only  a  distracted 
virtue.  You  catch  him  in  the  act,  overhaul  him,  unabashed 
he  confesses,  sees  nothing  very  objectionable  in  the  deed, 
and  is  ready  to  sacrifice  all  his  gains  to  put  you  in  good 
temper.  This  trait  of  mere  criminal  bonho7nie  in  all  his 
dealings  with  the  World,  the  Flesh,  and  the  Devil  should 
never  be  overlooked  in  estimating  a  Russian's  character. 
He  is  no  distressing  moralist  clamoring  for  a  stringency  in 
public  opinion  which  he  will  do  his  best  to  evade  ;  he  asks 
no  greater  laxity  than  he  will  allow ;  and  playing  the  game 
of  life  with  cards  in  his  own  sleeve,  he  would  only  laugh  if 
you  are  detected  in  a  similar  fraud. 

1  Graschdanin,  30th  August,  1889. 


DISHONESTY.  IO5 

Nowhere  is  the  indulgence  with  which  the  people  regard 
the  gravest  forms  of  dishonesty  —  robbery  and  burglary  — 
so  clearly,  so  unmistakably  manifested,  as  in  their  solemn 
consecration,  their  elevation  to  the  dignity  of  religious  cere- 
monies, in  the  celebration  of  one  of  the  most  impressive 
popular  festivals  of  the  year.  The  feast  is  called  Kuzminki,  in 
honor  of  Saints  Cosmus  and  Damian.  It  is  usually  ^cele- 
brated on  the  I  St  November,  by  a  number  of  quaint  cere- 
monies ending  with  a  copious  refection,  in  all  of  which  only 
unmarried  girls  take  part.  In  order  to  get  together  the 
refreshments  which  constitute  an  essential  element  of  the 
feast,  all  the  girls  of  the  place  rob  and  steal  without  excep- 
tion. And  not  only  do  they  steal  from  their  i)arents  and 
relations,  but  they  extend  the  operation  to  perfect  strangers, 
whose  money,  fowls,  and  movable  property  generally,  they 
seize  upon  with  that  contempt  of  consequences  which  befits 
apostles  of  a  religious  cause.  "  The  feast  of  Kuzminki," 
says  a  special  writer  on  this  subject,  "  is  wholesale  robbery. 
The  lads  also  steal  for  it,  giving  the  booty  to  the  girls. 
They  have  no  hesitation  about  using  violence  to  all  who 
resist."  ^ 

It  has  been  pointed  out  more  than  once  in  the  course  of 
this  book  that  there  is  a  numerous  minority  of  honest  men 
who  are  neither  sectarians  nor  Jews  in  this  vast  empire  of  dis- 
honesty —  men  who  deserve  great  praise  for  fortitude,  and 
greater  still  for  perseverance  amid  almost  irresistible  tempta- 
tions, whose  standard  of  morality  is  higher  than  the  a\'erage 
standard  in  England,  who  would  as  soon  think  of  cutting 
,out  their  tongue  as  of  telling  a  gratuitous  or  malicious  lie, 
and  who  would  die  of  starvation  rather  than  defraud  friend 
or  enemy.  It  should  not  be  disguised,  however,  that  even 
they  bear  upon  them  unmistakable  signs  of  the  influence  of 
the  society  in  which  their  lot  is  cast ;  and  while  their  own 
conduct  may  be  in  strict  accordance  with  the  highest  prin- 
ciples of  justice,  their  views  of  the  differently  shaped  actions 
of  their  fellow-countrymen  are  determined  by  considerations 
wholly  foreign  and  even  hostile  to  all  accepted  theories  of 
right  living.  "  I  have  often  conversed,"  says  a  Russian 
writer  in  a  journal  approved  by  the  Government  censure  — 

"  I  have  often  conversed  on  the  subject  of  theft  with  men  who  are 
absolutely  honest;  but  even  they  never  once  expressed  that  repugnance 
to  lying  which  characterizes  the  way  of  thinking  of  civilized  people. 

1  Northern  Messenger,  1888,  No.  12,  pp.  61,  62. 


106  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

An  cpically  calm  tone,  smiles  and  laughter  at  the  description  of  thievish 
conduct  and  at  what  they  consider  the  ludicrous  position  of  the  victims 
of  the  theft,  and  a  rapturous  raising  of  the  voice  when  detailing  the 
deftness  of  the  robber  —  that  is  all  that  I  have  observed  during  such 
conversations."  ^ 

This  inconsistency  is  apt  to  puzzle  the  logical  mind.  But 
inconsistency,  and  even  the  simultaneous  play  of  diametri- 
cally oi)posed  tendencies,  is  to  a  much  greater  extent  the 
basis  of  the  Russian  character  than  at  first  sight  seems  possi- 
ble ;  and  a  noble  deed  is  often  the  outcome  of  an  irresistible 
and  sudden  impulse  felt  and  acted  upon  the  very  instant 
after  the  will  had  deliberately  approved  and  resolved  upon 
a  base  treason. 

This  picture  of  millions  of  men  and  women  wallowing  in 
an  ocean  of  moral  ooze,  wildly  stirring  up  the  muddy  depths 
of  unimagined  baseness,  while  fighdng  life's  batde  on  a 
false  issue,  is  well  calculated  to  evoke  profound  sensations, 
to  leave  lasting  impressions.  Those  whom  it  moves  to  self- 
congratulation  or  to  contemptuous  pity  would  do  well  to 
reflect  that  the  frequent  back  eddies  of  their  own  superior 
civilization  are  often  mighty  enough  to  be  confounded  for  a 
time  with  the  main  onward  current.  The  spirit  in  which 
these  gaping  sores  of  the  Russian  people  are  pointed  out  to 
the  gaze  of  the  curious  world  is  identical  with  that  which 
impelled  the  despairing  and  dying  soldiers  of  Napoleon's 
army  in  Joppa  to  display  theirs  in  all  their  disgusting  naked- 
ness—  in  the  hope  of  touching  the  hearts  of  those  responsi- 
ble for  such  horrors,  and  inducing  them  to  adopt  some 
measures  with  a  view  to  effecting  their  cure. 


1  Nortkern  Messenger,  1889,  No.  i,  p.  49. 


RUSSIAN  prisons:  thk  simple  truth.        107 


CHAPTER  V. 

RUSSIAN  PRISONS  :    THE  SIMPLE  TRUTH. 

The  views  of  that  section  of  the  British  pubUc  which  pos- 
sesses, or  thinks  it  possesses,  the  right  to  hold  any  respect- 
ing the  advantages  and  the  evils  of  the  Russian  prison  system 
have,  within  the  past  few  years,  touched  every  extreme  of 
admiration  and  loathing,  and  are  now  waiting,  like  Sacculinse^ 
in  search  of  crabs,  for  new  facts  to  cling  to.  First  we  were 
treated  to  the  views  of  an  English  clergyman,  named  Lans- 
dell,  who,  after  having  rushed  rapidly  through  a  long  stretch 
of  country  which  he  was  credil)ly  informed  was  called  Rus- 
sia, wrote  several  volumes  on  the  land  and  people,  breaking 
out  into  lyrism  whenever  he  alluded  to  the  prisons  of  Siberia. 
Then  came  Mr.  George  Kennan,'  who,  having  taken  the 
trouble  to  study  the  subject  before  writing  upon  it,  has  been 
engaged  for  over  a  year  in  piling  agony  upon  agony,  ex- 
hausting the  resources  of  the  English  language  in  his  search 
for  words  adequate  to  express  his  horror  and  indignation 
at  the  inhuman  cruelty  with  which  convicts  in  Siberia  are 
treated,  and  which  is  erroneously  supposed  to  be  restricted 
chiefly  to  political  prisoners.  Lastly,  we  have  an  official 
representative  of  Russia'-  solemnly  assuring  her  countrymen 
and  the  civilized  world  generally  that  the  only  trait  in  the 
Russian  prison  system  calculated  to  astonish  Englishmen  is 
the  excessive  indulgence  with  which  Russian  convicts  are 
treated  —  the  kindness  with  which  they  are  brought  up  by 
hand,  as  it  were.  No  wonder  that  the  bewildered  Rritish 
public  is  at  a  loss  what  to  believe,  and  is  desirous  of  unearth- 
ing some  fresh  facts,  unvarnished  by  political  prejudice  and 
imcolored  by  personal  feeling,  from  which  it  may  be  per- 
mitted to  draw  its  own  conclusions. 

The  object  of  this  paper  is  to  furnish  them. 


1  Prince  Krapotkin,  who  spoke  en  connaissance  de  cause  and  whose 
scientific  accuracy  and  objectivity  is  beyond  praise,  was  considered  too 
deeply  interested  to  be  listened  to  with  more  than  idle  curiosity. 

-  Madame  Novikoff  has  lately  been  appointed  a  member  of  the  St. 
Petersburg  Prison  Board. 


I08  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

Like  Mr.  G.  Kennan,  I  have  been  put  in  possession  of 
ample,  interesting,  and  trustworthy  information  about  the 
latest  phases  of  the  so-called  "  horrors  "  by  Russian  friends, 
many  of  whom  were  at  one  time,  and  others  of  whom  still 
are,  exiles  in  Siberia.  It  is  my  intention,  however,  to  with- 
hold all  such  accounts,  because  their  existence,  vouched  for 
by  a  person  or  persons  unknown,  might  be  denied  or  their 
significance  belittled,  as  that  of  very  exceptional  incidents, 
by  the  Russian  Government,  with  the  ease  and  assurance 
with  which  Mr.  Kennan's  statements  were  contradicted ; 
and  the  confusion  would  only  be  worse  confounded.^  In- 
stead I  have  determined  to  rely  solely  on  the  authority  of 
facts  which  will  pass  current  with  Russians  themselves, 
because  vouched  for  by  loyal  Russian  officials  who,  occupy- 
ing responsible  positions  in  Siberia,  or  sent  out  there  for  the 
purpose  of  investigating  the  subject,  have  devoted  years  of 
unremitting  labor  to  the  study  of  the  prisons,  have  drawn  up 
reports,  not  about  exceptional  instances  or  "  horrors  "  that 
occur  once  a  year,  or  to  one  class  of  prisoners  only,  but 
concerning  the  general  working  of  the  entire  system.  These 
reports  have  lately  appeared  in  print,  with  the  sanction  of 
the  Government,  thus  becoming  invested  with  an  authority 
the  value  of  which  can  scarcely  be  exaggerated. 

Before  proceeding,  it  may  be  well  to  clear  the  ground 
still  further  and  say  a  word  about  motives.  I  am  not  one 
of  those  optimists  who  believe  that  diplomatic  interference 
in  the  internal  affairs  of  Russia,  if  possible,  would  be  pro- 
ductive of  any  more  good  than  could  be  effected  on  a 
vicious  rhinoceros  by  painting  its  hide  with  jod.  And  even 
if  it  could,  I  confess  I  am  not  sufficiently  in  love  with  that 
rank  Pharisaism  which  seems  to  be  one  of  the  main  ingredi- 
ents of  the  moral  atmosphere  of  these  islands  to  encourage 
Englishmen  to  monopolize  the  task. 


1  In  the  Review  of  Reviews,  May,  1890,  Madame  Novikoff  is  represented 
as  having  explained  away  the  so-called  "  Siberian  horrors  "  by  the  phrase, 
"  Every  private  blunder  which  deserves  to  be  regretted  and  investigated  is 
puffed'up  into  a  systematic  and  normal  plan  of  action  on  the  part  of  our 
administration"  {Review  ^/^  AVzvVwj,  p.  406) .  This  magniloquence  seems 
very  nearlv  akin  to  that  which  made  a  Russian  Slavophile,  writing  last  year 
in  the  Pail  Mall  Gazette,  during  the  Abyssinian  expedition  of  the  "  Red  Sea 
Cossacks,"  describe  as  "saintly  sisters  of  charity,  who  were  brutally  fired 
upon  by  the  French,"  certain  women  of  very  loose  morals  who  attached 
themselves  to  Aschinoffs  lawless  marauders,  and  shocked  the  untutored 
Abyssinians  quite  as  much  as  the  harridans  who  accompanied  the  Christian 
warriors  at  the  siege  of  Acre  scandalized  the  Mohammedans.  Surely  bet- 
ter samples  of  saintly  feminine  virtue  can  be  found  in  Russia  than  these. 


RUSSIAN    PRISONS  :     THE    SIMPLE    TRUTH.  lOQ 

Lastly,  I  would  venture  to  point  but  that  the  almost 
exclusive  attention  paid  in  these  questions  of  prison  treat- 
ment to  the  hard  lot  of  political  prisoners,  whom  in  Russia 
it  is  often  difficult  to  distinguish  from  ordinary  criminals, 
has  the  effect  of  narrowing  the  issue  to  an  extreme  degree, 
and  making  us  entirely  lose  sight  of  the  extent  and  the  root 
of  the  evil.  Moreover  some  allowance  should  surely  be 
made  for  that  peculiar  irritation  which  the  government  of 
an  autocracy  must  necessarily  feel  towards  political  conspir- 
ators who  threaten  its  very  existence,  and  who,  before 
embarking  in  such  unpromising  ventures,  may  be  taken  to 
have  carefully  counted  the  cost.  No  state,  ancient  or 
modern,  republic,  monarchy,  or  theocracy,  has  ever  shown 
much  consideration  for  its  political  prisoners,  and  from  the 
days  of  Darius  Hystaspes,  who  tells  us  in  his  off-hand  way 
how  he  mutilated  and  chopped  up  the  malcontents  who 
disturbed  his  peace  of  mind,  down  to  the  present  year 
which  has  witnessed  the  death  by  flogging  of  Madam  Sihida, 
there  is  little  to  choose  in  the  way  of  clemency.  For  this 
reason  I  have  thought  it  advisable  not  only  not  to  restrict 
my  remarks  to  the  treatment  experienced  by  political  pris- 
oners, as  has  been  done  by  most  of  the  writers  on  Russian 
prison  life,  but  to  treat  the  latter  merely  as  a  part,  and  a 
not  very  considerable  one,  of  the  vast  army  of  criminal  and 
innocent  people  of  all  ages  and  both  sexes  who  are  always 
brutalized  and  often  tortured  to  death  in  the  prisons  of 
Russia.' 


1  If  we  can  credit  an  extraordinary  statement  to  which  currency  is  given 
by  the  Review  of  Reviews  —  a  periodical  which  apparently  thinks  that 
nothing  can  interest  English  readers  more  than  detailed  accounts  of  the 
sayings  and  doings  of  obscure  Slavophiles —  Madame  Novikoff  has  publicly 
asserted  in  a  Russian  periodical  that  the  sensational  accounts  of_  the  treat- 
ment to  which  Russian  political  prisoners  are  subjected  are  based  on 
deliberate,  wanton  falsehood ;  journalists,  travellers,  Members  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  Englishmen  generally  being  condemned  by  tyrannical  public 
opinion  to  lie  in  a  gross,  unjustifiable  manner  whenever  they  take  to  describ- 
ing Russia  or  the  Russians.  A  gentleman  named  de  W'indt,  however,  is 
one  of  the  few  just  men  who  dare  to  shame  the  devil  and  speak  the  truth. 
This  gentleman  wrote  a  book  in  1889,  entitled  From  Pekin  to  Calais  by 
Land,  in  which  Madame  Novikoff  contends  he  has  refuted  "  nearly  all  the 
Siberian  horrors  which  at  present  ornament  the  pages  of  the  principal 
English  journals.  Accustomed  to  English  ways  (in  England  people  are 
hanged  almost  every  week),  he  cannot  understand  [1  am  quoting  the 
Reviezu  of  Reviews,  May,  1890]  wky  Russians  should  s/iow  such  compassion 
as  they  do  to  convicts."  Now  the  Siberian  horrors  have  all  reference  to  the 
sufferings  o{  political  prisoners,  and  turning  to  Mr.  de  Windt's  book,  p. 
363,  we  find  him  saying  plainly  about  them  the  very  opposite  of  what  is 
Here  attributed  to  him,    He  calls  their  prison,  Kara,  "  a  hell  upon  earth." 


IIO  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

"  Our  systems  of  prison  organization  and  penal  settle- 
ments," says  a  specialist  of  many  years'  experience,  in  a 
most  interesting  report  on  Russian  prisons  drawn  up  for 
the  behoof  of  the  members  of  the  International  Prison  Con- 
gress now  assembled  in  St.  Petersburg, — 

"  our  systems  of  prison  organization  and  penal  settlements  are  now 
passing  through  the  third  period  of  their  evolution.  The  theory  of 
brutal  retaliation  found  expression  in  the  damp  and  dark  casements  of 
the  l-;ingdom  of  Muscovy,  in  the  torture,  the  splitting  of  nostrils  and 
the  quartering  of  prisoners;  its  influence,  preserved  in  an  epoch  very 
nearly  approaching  our  own,  was  manifested  in  slavery,  branding,  the 
knout  and  the  plete}-  Our  present  houses  of  detention  and  convict 
prisons  are  the  embodiment  of  the  theory  according  to  which  noxious 
members  of  society  should  be  cast  out  and  no  further  care  taken  of 
their  lot." 

There  are  four  categories  of  prisoners  recognized  by  Rus- 
sian law,  and  it  is  to  meet  the  requirements  of  these  that  the 
prisons   are  supposed  to  be  constructed  and  maintained  : 

1.  Those  who  are  charged  with  having  committed  a  crime, 
but  may  prove  to  be  perfectly  innocent  of  it  {s/cdstveniiye). 

2.  Persons  detained  "  administratively,"  viz.  (a)  "  political 
misdemeanants  "  not  condemned  by  any  court  of  law,  but 
whom  the  authorities  deem  it  desirable  to  deprive  of  their 
legJll  rights  and  to  punish  as  convicts  ;  {d)  the  members  of 
tax-paying  societies,  such  as  the  Mi?;  who  have  been  ex- 


Whenever  he  does  express  himself  in  favor  of  Russian  prisons  he  expressly 
excepts  political  convicts  and  says,  "  Be  it  understood  that  I  speak  of  crimi- 
nals and  not  of  polhical  prisoners  or  Nihilists,  to  whom,  notwithstanding  all 
that  ardent  Russophiles  may  say,  Siberia  is  a  veritable  hell  upon  earth. 
The  Russian  '  criminal'  is  exiled  "to  colonize;  the  Russian  Nihilist  (tti  vnut 
cases)  to  die."  The  writer  who  defines  this  to  be  a  "  refutation  "  of  the 
"Siberian  horrors"  would  surely  object  to  the  commonly  received  defini- 
tion of  veracity.  Whether  Mr.  de  Windt's  praise  of  the  admirable  treat- 
ment of  common  criminals  in  Russia  is  better  founded  than  Captain  Cuttle's 
keen  appreciation  of  the  worldly  wisdom  of  the  Bible  as  embodied  in  what 
he  thought  were  Bible  aphorisins,  the  reader  will  be  in  a  position  to  judge 
later  on. 

1  It  may  be  well  to  give  Mr.  de  Windt's  description  of  this  instrument, 
which  he  adinits  is  still  used:  "  It  is  a  lash  of  twisted  hide  about  two  feet 
long,  terminating  in  thin  lashes  a  foot  long  with  small  leaden  balls  at  the 
end ;  it  is  a  terrible  instrument,  and  one  which,  if  severely  wielded,  often 
results  in  the  death  of  a  prisoner.  From  25  to  50  strokes  are  usually  given, 
but  if  the  prisoner  have  friends  they  usually  bribe  the  executioner  to  make 
the  blow  a  severe  one.  A  skilful  flogger  and  one  who  wishes  to  make  the 
convict  suffer,  draws  no  blood,  for  this  has  the  effect  of  relieving  pain. 
Commencing  very  gently  he  gradually  increases  the  force  of  the  blows  till 
the  whole  of  the  back  is  covered  with  long  swollen  wales.  In  this  case 
mortification  often  sets  in  and  the  victim  dies.  The  plete  is  only  used  at 
Kara,  Nicolaieff,  and  Sakhaliern,  and  then  only  very  rarely  and  on  the 
most  desperate  criminals."     Op.  cit.  p.  415, 


RUSSIAN    PRISONS  :     THE    SIMPLE    TRUTH.  I  I  I 

pelled  by  their  fellow-members  and  handed  over  to  the 
Government  for  deportation  to  Siberia,  without  being  ac- 
cused of  any  definite  crime  ;  (r)  persons  who  have  never 
been  accused  or  suspected  of  any  crime  or  misdemeanor 
whatever,  but  who  are  being  forwarded  to  their  native  place 
at  the  request  of  relatives,  guardians,  or  the  authorities.  3. 
Convicts  properly  so  called  who  are  being  deported  in  virtue 
of  a  legal  sentence  condemning  them  to  live  in  Siberia,  to 
colonize  it,  to  serve  their  time  in  convict  battahons,  in  penal 
servitude,  or  in  a  central  prison.  4.  Criminals  who  are 
undergoing  incarceration  as  an  independent  species  of  pun- 
ishment, to  which  they  have  been  sentenced  by  the  law 
courts  for  crimes  ranging  from  common  assault  or  larceny 
up  to  a  wilful  murder. 

In  theory,  Russian  prisons  keep  these  four  classes  of  per- 
sons quite  separate  from  each  other,  and  humanely  provide 
for  treatment  varying  in  rigor  in  proportion  to  the  degree  of 
the  prisoner's  guilt.  In  reality  the  more  brutal  and  case- 
hardened  a  criminal  is,  the  more  consideration  he  receives 
at  the  hands  of  his  jailers  ;  the  more  savage  and  beastly  his 
instincts,  the  greater  his  opportunities  to  gratify  them. 

"Everyone  is  familiar  with  the  ostrog  (provincial  prison),  the  sight 
of  which  plunges  one's  soul  into  a  sea  of  melancholy,  and  wrtch  is 
almost  always  the  first  thing  that  meets  your  eye  when  you  enter  a  pro- 
vincial city.  This  building  is  destined  to  serve  as  the  temporary  place 
of  confinement  for  all  gangs  of  prisoners  that  pass  through  the  place ; 
it  has  also  to  accommodate  untried  persons  who  may  prove  to  be  inno- 
cent of  the  crimes  laiil  to  their  charge ;  and  it  is  likewise  the  place^  in 
which  are  incarcerated  all  local  cririiinals  for  the  short  periods  of  im- 
prisonment to  which  they  have  been  condemned.  Hence  each  prison 
should  be,  and  is  in  theory,  provided  with  three  separate  sections  cor- 
responding to  these  three  classes,  in  addition  to  which  it  js  supposed  to 
be  divided  into  a  male  and  female  half.  Lastly,  the  letter  of  the  law 
requires  that  there  should  be  a  special  wing  for  members  of  the  privi- 
leged classes"  ^  — 

(nobles,  tschinovniks,  merchants,  and  ecclesiastics) .  Such 
is  the  theory,  fair  and  humane,  if  somewhat  complicated 
and  artificial. 

Simplicity  is  unfortunately  the  only  merit  that  can  be 
predicated  of  the  reality,  which  is  utterly  at  variance  with 
the  theory.  "  Provincial  prisons  are  in  the  majority  of  cases 
so  small  and  their  financial  resources  so  slender,  that  the 


1  Ct.  "  Report  on  Russian  Prison  Organization  drawn  up  for  the  behoof 
of  the  International  Prison  Congress."  Law  Messenger,  1890,  No.  ii.,  p. 
331- 


112  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

more  you  divide  them  into  partitions,  the  more  each  room 
looks  hl^e  a  dog-kennel  in  Naples."  ^ 

The  most  important  functions  of  all  are  exercised  by  the 
so-called  "Forwarding  prisons"  {Peressylnye),\\'\\\c\\  have 
been  aptly  likened  to  prisoners'  hotels,  where  meetings 
between  the  members  of  the  entire  criminal  world  are 
continually  taking  place.  In  any  one  of  them  you  will  find, 
especially  during  the  period  of  winter  confinement,  repre- 
sentatives of  all  the  peoples  and  tongues  of  the  Russian 
Empire,  men  guilty  of  all  categories  of  crime,  and  stained 
with  every  degree  of  guilt,  convicted,  suspected,  untried, 
notoriously  innocent. 

A  short  summary  of  some  of  the  official  data  published  by 
the  Russian  Government  in  1885  will  enable  us  to  form  a 
more  correct  idea  of  the  life  that  throbs  within  these  terres- 
trial hells  than  any  rhetorical  description.  During  the  year 
ending  in  1885,  in  addition  to  the  94,488  convicts  who 
remained  since  the  previous  year,  no  less  than  227^506 
prisoners  arrived  in  the  various  places  of  detention  in  the 
empire.  Of  these  116,998  were  deported  convicts  ;  324,807 
were  criminals  on  their  way  to  their  respective  destinations ; 
11,631  were  prisoners  of  other  categories,  and  "  administra- 
tives^"  and  52,904  were  of  their  own  free  will  accompanying 
the  convicts.  That  same  year  722,021  were  taken  off  the 
list,  of  whom  103,453  were  exiles  deported;  319,375  were 
being  forwarded  to  various  destinations;  10,939  were  "  ad- 
mini'stratives,"  and  50,054  were,  of  their  own  free  will,  accom- 
panying their  relatives,  who  were  convicts.  Consequently 
during  that  year  there  passed  through  the  ctapes  and  the 
various  forwarding  prisons  of  Siberia  506,340  prisoners. 

When  we  reflect  that  a  large  proportion  of  this  army  of 
half  a  million  criminal  nomads  —  about  300,000  —  are  every 
year  l)eing  sent  backwards  and  forwards,  we  can  form  some 
idea  of  the  difficulty  of  the  problem  which  a  humane  Rus- 
sian government  will  sooner  or  later  be  called  on  to  solve. 
To  regulate  the  conduct  of  legions  of  desperadoes  who  are 
here  to-day  and  gone  to-morrow  is  a  task  for  the  execution 
of  which  something  more  than  good  intentions  combined 
with  brute  force  is  indispensable.  The  Central  Prison  Board, 
it  should  be  said  to  its  credit,  has  endeavored  to  induce  the 


1  Cf.  "  Report  on  Russian  Prison  Organization  drawn  up  for  the  behoof 
of  the  International  Prison  Congress."    Law  Messenger,  1890,  No.  ii.,  p, 

331- 


RUSSIAN    prisons:     THE    SIMPLE    TRUTH.  II3 

• 

government  to  take  some  measures  to  mitigate  the  evils  of 
the  present  system,  and  has  among  other  things  given  strict 
orders  that  every  forwarding  prison  should  contain  separate 
sections  for  convict  families,  much  as  zealous  young  country 
doctors  occasionally  insist  upon  an  indigent  patient  purchas- 
ing beefsteaks  and  port  wine,  forgetful  that  he  has  not  the 
wherewithal  to  buy  even  a  platter  of  porridge  or  a  meal  of 
cold  potatoes.  There  is  not  a  prison  in  Siberia  that  does 
not  contain  from  twice  to  four  times  the  maximum  number 
of  prisoners  for  which  it  was  constructed. 

The  effects  of  this  overcrowding  are  far  more  horrible 
than  anything  that  can  be  realized  by  readers  who  have 
never  seen  prisons  on  the  associated  system  moderately 
filled.  It  is  the  cause  of  inconceivable  human  misery ;  the 
rooms  are  transformed  into  loathsome  cesspools,  hotbeds  of 
every  species  of  disease,  physical  and  moral ;  the  stench  of 
the  noisome  air  is  intolerable  ;  the  clammy,  clinging  vapors 
which  poison  the  body  seem  to  eat  into  and  dissolve  the 
very  soul ;  and  to  all  these  miseries  is  superadded  a  torture 
akin  to  that  the  mere  anticipation  of  which  seemed  to  Shel- 
ley's Beatrice  a  more  terrible  hell  than  any  that  priests  or 
prophets  ever  conjured  up  to  terrify  guilty  consciences  with  ; 
the  hated  presence  of  human  fiends,  who  are  kiUing  the  souls 
as  well  as  the  bodies  of  the  majority  of  the  prisoners. 

Internal  prison  control  on  the  part  of  the  authorities  is  a 
fiction ;  inspectors  and  inspected  strike  up  an  agreement  in 
virtue  of  which  the  forwarding  prison  becomes,  for  the  win- 
ter, a  semi-independent  oligarchy  governed  —  or  misgov- 
erned —  by  a  few  desperate  villains  amongst  the  worst  class 
of  the  so-called  tramps.'  These  few  ringleaders,  resolved  to 
live  as  comfortably  as  they  can  till  marching  time  begins 
again,  take  the  reins  of  government  in  their  hands,  organize 
and  put  in  motion  all  the  complicated  machinery  that  takes 
every  prisoner  in  hand  and  shapes  his  life  and  slightest 
actions,  and,  turning  the  prison  into  a  hell,  enjoy  the  rights 
and  privileges  of  devils. 

Their  first  step  is  to  get  storehouses  in  which  all  their 
contraband  property  is  hidden  whenever  a  sudden  search  is 
made,  and  the  remarkable  success  which  they  usually  attain 
in  disguising  these  secret  strongholds  is  due  to  an  amount 

1  Tramps  (Russice,  Bro-dydghi)  are  frequently  the  most  desperate  crimi- 
nals of  Siberia  who  have  escaped  and  persistently  refuse  to  give  their  names 
or  disclose  their  antecedents.  The  law  calls  them  tramps  and  treats  them 
as  desperate  cut-throats. 


114  RUSSIAN    TR41TS    AND    TERRORS. 

• 

of  energy  and  inventive  power  which  one  seldom  sees 
employed  by  free  men  engaged  in  the  ordinary  callings  of 
life.  A  "  good"  prisoner  is  able,  in  a  perfectly  empty  room, 
which  has  just  been  repaired,  swept  out,  and  put  to  rights, 
to  stow  away  spirits,  tobacco,  tools,  and  even  arms,  anS  to 
hide  them  so  effectually  that  their  discovery  can  only  occur 
as  the  result  of  treachery  or  of  pure  chance.  Whole  window- 
sills  are  taken  to  pieces,  stone  walls  (when  they  exist) 
are  scooped  out  to  an  incredible  depth,  planks  in  the  floor 
are  defUy  removed,  the  posts  that  support  the  plank  beds  are 
drilled  and  made  hollow  —  and  all  this  is  done  so  thor- 
oughly, so  artistically,  as  almost  to  defy  detection. 

"Thus  in  the  Sterlitamak  prison,  in  the  year  1880,  a  convict  named 
Sookatsheff  hid  a  live  horse,  which  he  had  unyoked  a  short  time  previ- 
ously from  the  cart  on  which  flour  had  been  conveyed  to  the  jirison. 
All  attempts  to  find  it  were  fruitless.  At  last  at  the  request  of  the  in- 
spector, Sookatsheff  himself  undertook  to  '  search  '  for  it.  He  '  found  ' 
it,  its  feet  tied  together  in  the  loft  of  a  two-story  house,  the  door  of 
which  was  locked  with  the  inspector's  own  lock."  1 

The  next  care  of  the  members  of  the  prison  oligarchy  is 
to  establish  regular  communications  with  the  outer  world, 
mainly  in  order  to  smuggle  in  spirits,  cards,  tobacco,  tools, 
and  "  materials."  In  this  matter  the  warders  and  the  sen- 
tries who  guard  the  prison  from  the  outside  render  them 
inestimable  services.  Wares  that  are  not  very  bulky  are 
brought  directly  into  the  prison,  in  spite  of  the  circumstance 
that  persons  coming  in  are  always  searched  ;  large  objects 
are  thrown  over  the  wall  at  a  place  agreed  upon  beforehand, 
spirits  being  poured  into  tin  vessels,  which  are  rolled  up  in 
straw  or  rags  and  flung  over.  Alaidans,  or  prison  clubs,  are 
founded  for  the  sale  of  greasy  cards,  wet  tobacco,  and  poison- 
ous spirits;  "common"  fund  is  formed  —  always  for  the 
sole  benefit  of  the  oligarchs  —  from  the  monthly  subscrip- 
tions, something  in  the  nature  of  the  "  garnish  "  levied  in 
old  English  i)risons  before  Howard's  time,  which  every  pris- 
oner who  receives  food-money  is  compelled  nolens  volcns  to 
pay,  and  from  the  exorbitant  tributes  extorted  by  barbarous 
methods  from  the  unfortunate  wretches  who  pass  through 
the  forwarding  prison  on  their  way  elsewhere.  One,  and 
not  by  any*  means  the  worst,  of  these  inhuman  practices 
consists  in  compelling  all  new  comers,  even  though  they  pass 
but  one   night  in  the   prison,  to  pay  three  roubles  (about 


1  Law  Messenger,  1890,  No.  iv.,  p.  634. 


RUSSIAN  prisons:   the  simple  truth.       115 

• 

seven  shillings)  for  the  use  of  the  parasha,  or  night  vessel.' 
The  oligarchs  select  a  complete  staff  of  officials  to  carry  on 
the  work  of  "governing"  :  "elders,"  "  bakers,"  "cooks," 
"guardians  of  \\\q  parasha,''  etc.,  etc.  Immorality  is  prac- 
tisetl  on  a  scale  unsuspected  in  the  very  worst  of  over-civil- 
ized European  countries,  and  contemplated  only  in  the  penal 
code  of  the  Old  Testament.-  Were  it  otherwise  one  might 
feel  shocked  enough  to  learn  that  not  only  do  the  prisoners 
succeed  by  means  of  bribery,  cunning,  or  violence  in  gain- 
ing access  to  the  female  half  of  the  ostrog,  but  they  also 
organize,  wherever  possible,  a  Persian  harem.  Not  only  are 
these  things  connived  at  by  the  authorities,  but  the  prison 
officials  frequently  outbid  the  convicts  in  unnamable  im- 
morality. 

Lastly,  a  prisoners'  committee  of  safety  is  formed  —  an 
institution  which,  in  some  respects,  reminds  one  of  the 
redoubtable  Vehmgericht  of  the  Middle  Ages,  terrible  by  • 
the  absolute,  uncontrolled  power  it  wields,  by  the  Venetian 
suspiciousness  with  which  it  regards  most  men,  and  by  the 
inexorable  cruelty  with  which  its  decrees  are  executed.  The 
life  of  every  prisoner  is  in  its  hands.  For  acts  which  con- 
victs call  "  light  crimes,"  and  free  men  term  indifferent,  see- 
ing that  they  are  devoid  of  moral  guilt  or  merit,  they  are 
beaten  with  knotted  handkerchiefs ;  for  treachery  or  even 
neglect  in  executing  commissions  the  penalty  is  death,  and 
the  sentence  is  immutable  as  the  laws  of  the  Medes  and  the 
Persians,  and  as  sure  to  be  carried  out  as  a  decree  of  fate.^ 

The  so-called  "  Central  "  differs  completely  from  the  for- 
warding prisons  —  among  other  things,  in  that  it  is  a  strictly 
"  cellular  prison."  Judging  by  its  results  it  might  be  aptly 
termed  a  "  soul-extractor  "  ;  it  utterly  destroys  human  per- 
sonality. "  All  the  customs,  the  personal  characteristics,  the 
traits  that  distinguish  a  man  from  other  men,  are  all  annihi- 
lated after  he  has  spent  some  time  in  the  Central  Prison, 
where  he  becomes  a  mere  thing,  a  number."''  He  is  not 
even  so  much  — 

"  as  a  beast  of  burden,  which  is  fed  in  order  that  it  may  work.  In  most 
cases  he  has  no  work  to  do.  He  sits,  or  as  the  prisoners  themselves 
express  it,  '  he  lies,'  and  this  weight  of  idleness  crushes  him  down  infi- 
nitely more  completely  thati  the  most  grinding  forms  of  penal  servitude. 
I  saw  many  hardened  criminals,  who  cared  not  a  rush  fBr  their  wives, 
weep  like  little  children  when  the  latter  refused  to  follow  them  to  Sibe- 

1  Law  Messenger,  1890,  Xo.  iv.,  p.  634.        ^  Ibid.,  1890,  No.  ii.,  p.  324. 

2  Ibid.  No.  ii.,  p.  324.  ^Ibid.  No.  iv.,  p.  635. 


Il6  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

ria.'  I  have  also  frequently  seen  prisoners  who  had  served  their  time 
in  the  'Central'  and  had  recently  been  released:  they  were  mere 
shadows,  mannikins,  automata  vi^ound  up  once  for  all  — men  they  were 
not."  2 

When  a  prisoner,  condemned  for  a  long  term,''  has  spent 
the  third  part  of  it  in  the  "Central,"  he  is  deported  to 
Sakhalien,  which,  bad  as  it  is,  is  considered  a  most  attractive 
place  in  comparison  to  the  prison  he  leaves.  There  these 
"  stupid  living  ruins  "  are  left  to  their  own  devices,  and  ex- 
pected to  earn  a  livelihood  by  their  own  unaided  efforts.  It 
is  scarcely  surprising  that  they  should  rapidly  develop  into 
tramps. 

"  I  have  known  cases  of  men  condemned  for  short  terms  of  imprison- 
ment in  the  '  Central '  exchanging  their  names  with  men  under  long 
sentences,  allured  by  the  outlook  of  passing  but  a  third  of  the  long 
sentence  in  the  tcrril)le  'Central'  and  of  being  then  sent  on  to  Siberia. 
.Thus  a  man  condemned  for  seven  years  (tliis  is  called  a  short  term  in 
'Russian  law),  which  he  must  spend  at  the  'Central,'  willingly  ex- 
changes his  identity  with  one  sentenced  to  fifteen  years,  because  he 
will  have  to  spend  but  a  third  in  the  '  Central '  and  the  remainder  in 
Siberia."* 

The  following  two  typical  cases  may  be  taken  to  illustrate 
the  working  and  the  injustice  of  the  system  :  Ivan  and  Peter 
commit  equally  grave  or  perfectly  identical  crimes,  and  both 
are  sentenced  to  six  years'  penal  servitude. 

"Ivan  happens  to  be  married  and  his  wife  volunteers  to  accompany 
him  to  Siberia,  in  conse()uence  of  which,  having  worked  hard  for  three 
years,  say  in  the  prison  of  Srednie-Karinsk,  he  continues  to  work  at 
the  same  mines  but  not  in  prison  during  the  second  half  of  the  sen- 
tence, living  in  a  convict  colony  with  his  family.  The  unmarried  Peter 
goes  to  the  'Central '  and  undergoes  his  sentence  there;  and  if  he  sur- 
vives it,  is  released  with  his  soul  crushed  out  of  him  and  his  body  dis- 
eased, and  is  sent  on  to  Turukhansk  or  some  such  place  where  there  is 
absolutely  nothing  for  him  to  do  but  steal  and  enter  the  criminal  army 
of  tramps."  ^ 

Such  are  the  broad  lines  on  which  prison  life  in  Russia  is 
organized.  If  we  now  turn  to  the  daily  existence  of  the  in- 
mates of  the  forwarding  prisons,  in  so  far  as  that  is  the  work 


1  An  unmarried  convict,  or  a  married  one  whose  wife  refuses  to  follow 
him,  and  is  th«reforc  ipso  facto  divorced  from  him,  is  sent  to  the  Central 
instead  of  to  the  mines. 

-  Law  Messenger, ^o.\\\^\>.(iy^. 

3  If  the  term  is  a  short  one,  viz.,  not  more  than  for  seven  years,  he  spends 
the  whole  of  it  in  the  Central. 

^  Law  Messenger,  iv.,  p.  636.  ^  Ibid. 


RUSSIAN  prisons:   the  simple  truth.       117 

of  their  own  hands,  the  spectacle  that  meets  our  eyes  is  one 
that  would  have  sent  a  thrill  of  horror  to  the  soul  even  of  a 
Jefferies. 

The  Maidan,  or  club  —  and  some  prisons  are  provided 
with  several  —  has  a  canteen  attached,  in  which  tea  and 
sugar,  cards,  spirits  and  tobacco  are  sold  at  exorbitant 
prices.  All  the  news  is  reported  and  commented  upon  in 
the  Maidan,  all  questions  of  interest  to  the  prisoners  are 
discussed  and  solved  there,  and  always  in  accordance  with 
the  wishes  of  the  omnipotent  oligarchs.  The  prisoners  have 
numerous  amusements  in  which  they  indulge  by  order  of 
these  ringleaders,  and  more  barbarous,  filthy,  hellish  pastimes 
it  would  be  difficult  to  imagine.  They  cannot  even  be 
darkly  hinted  in  a  Russian  review  read  only  by  specialists, 
and  which  publishes  things  which  cannot  be  alluded  to  in 
this  country.  Among  the  few  prison  games  that  are  not  of 
this  kind  may  be  mentioned  the  "  Belfry,"  which  consists  in 
the  prisoners  getting  up  on  each  other's  backs  in  two  rows, 
and  every  four  such  hauling  up  a  fifth  by  the  beard  or  by 
the  hair  of  the  head,  and  swinging  him  about  like  the  tongue 
of  a  bell,  crying  out  the  while,  "  Bom  !  bom  !  "  '  Another 
popular  pastime  is  "Horse  selling":  a  convict  is  hoisted 
upon  another's  back  and  carried  round  the  room,  being 
mercilessly  beaten  with  knotted  handkerchiefs  all  the  time. 
He  often  suffers  quite  as  much  from  this  amusement  as  from 
a  sound  flogging  by  the  executioner.  "  The  Prisoners' 
Oath  "  is  a  pastinie  which  in  cynical  blasphemy  outdoes  all 
the  others  :  it  cannot  be  described.  "  The  Sewing  of  the 
Caftan,"  by  its  obscenity  and  the  exquisite  torture  it  inflicts 
on  the  victim,  has  nothing  else  to  match  it."- 

It  is  not  necessary  to  have  incurred  the  serious  displeasure 
of  the  oligarchs  to  be  subjected  to  these  kinds  of  punish- 
ments. For  "  serious  "  offences  death  is  the  penalty,  and 
the  executioners  do  their  bloody  work  with  perfect  impunity. 
In  the  prison  of  Tsh  ....  ski  I  saw  a  young  man  for  whom 
they  had  "  sewn  the  caftan  "  the  day  before,  and  I  shall 
never,  as  long  as  I  live,  be  able  to  blot  out  from  my  memory 
the  image  of  that  martyr's  foce  !  He  shortly  afterwards 
died  of  the  results.''  "  As  a  matter  of  course,  the  investiga- 
tion that  ensued  brought  nothing  to  light."  ■* 

If  in  the  course  of  this  or  any  other  investigation  a  pris- 

1  Laiu  Messenger,  iv.,  p.  627.  -  Ibid. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  628.  4  Ibid. 


Il8  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

oner  should  say  too  much,  if  his  reticence  or  his  admissions 
compromise  his  fellows,  if,  generally  speaking,  he  is  of  a 
talkative  disposition,  or  a  boaster,  he  is  set  down  as  a 
"heathen,"  and  is  mercilessly  persecuted,  beaten,  tortured. 
If  he  informs  on  his  colleagues,  death  is  his  portion,  and  the 
authorities  are  powerless  to  save  him. 

"  No  matter  how  well  a  spy  is  screened  and  protected  in  secret  cells, 
his  fate  will  overtake  him  sooner  or  later.  The  greater  the  injury  he 
inflicted  on  the  convict  corporation,  the  crueller  their  vengeance.  I  was 
acquainted  with  a  convict  condemned  to  deportation  to  Eastern  Siberia, 
who,  for  the  sake  of  lucre,  had  informed  on  three  of  his  companions. 
Thanks  to  the  efficient  measures  taken  to  screen  him  he  got  as  far  as 
Moscow  and  in  the  Kolymashny  courtyard  was  interned  in  a  secret  cell. 
That  very  night  the  lock  was  picked  by  some  person  or  persons  un- 
known and  the  spy  beaten  within  an  ace  of  his  life.  After  several 
months  of  careful  medical  treatment  he  recovered  and  was  forwarded 
on.  In  Kazan,  in  the  forwarding  prison  he  was  tortured  and  would 
have  been  killed  outright  had  he  not  been  torn  out  of  the  prisoners' 
hands  in  time.  Put  in  hosj^ital  under  the  doctor's  care,  he  \\as  poi- 
soned and  his  life  was  with  difficulty  saved.  He  then  feigned  madness 
and  was  placed  in  the  Central  Hospital  for  the  Insane,  where,  thanks 
to  his  extraordinary  ingenuity,  he  succeeded  in  remaining  for  about  a 
year.  Sent  on  along  with  the  first  spring  gang  of  convicts,  he  reached 
the  forwarding  prison  of  Tinmen,  where  he  was  crushed  to  death  '  by 
persons  unknown.'  This  is  by  no  means  an  exceptional  instance  and 
the  most  horrible  feature  of  such  executions  is  that  they  sometimes 
take  place  on  mere  suspicitm."  ^ 

One  has  no  difficulty  in  understanding  the  reluctance  of 
prisoners,  under  such  circumstances,  to  complain  of  the  pain 
and  misery  inflicted  upon  them  by  their  brutal  colleagues, 
who  really  rule  them.  I'hey  are  as  little  disposed  to  com- 
plain of  the  abuses  for  which  the  authorities  are  directly  re- 
sponsible, souk;  few  of  which  it  may  be  well  to  point  out. 

If  in  the  first  place  we  glance  at  the  buildings  —  the  etape 
prisons  —  we  find  that  they  are  the  most  miserable  lodgings 
any  class  of  human  beings  has  ever  yet  been  housed  in  since 
the  Troglodytes  took  to  dwelling  above  ground.  This  per- 
haps is  natural,  seeing  that  the  maintenance  of  the  prisons  is 
entrusted  to  unscrupulous  petty  speculators  who  receive 
from  ^35  to  £,^z^  a  year  for  the  work.  One  contractor  will 
often  include  five  or  even  more  prisons  within  the  sphere  of 
his  operations,  receiving  ^,^,^  for  each.  His  part  in  the 
transaction  generally  ceases  h^re,  for  he  immediately  cedes 
the  contract  to  some  still  less  scrupulous  and  more  grasping 

1  Law  Messenger,  iv.,  p.  628. 


RUSSIAN  prisons:   the  simple  truth.       119 

village  speculator,  to  whom  he  pays  ^5  per  prison,  thus 
gaining  _^20o  without  putting  himself  to  the  slightest  trouble, 
or  from  whom  he  sometimes  receives  as  much  as  ;^300  for 
ceding  the  contract. 

"  For  it  is  a  very  lucrative  occupation,  the  money  being  earned  in  two 
ways,  by  not  carrying  out  the  very  moderate  conditions  of  the  contract, 
and  by  engaging  in  illegal  business  with  the  prisoners,  selling  them 
spirits,  cards,  tobacco,  tea,  sugar,  needles,  thread,  meat,  and  the  sinful 
human  body.  In  one  of  the  etape  prisons  of  the  Mamadyshevski  Dis- 
trict in  1882  there  lived  two  cheap  enchantresses.  Generally  speaking, 
everything  is  clear  at  the  etapes,  except  the  human  body"  ^ 

These  itape  prisons  are  horrid  holes,  utterly  unfit  for 
human  habitation,  and  unworthy  to  serve  for  the  housing  of 
brute  beasts.  These  words  have  the  ring  of  exaggeration 
about  them,  and  yet  the  idea  which  they  are  capable  of  sug- 
gesting to  a  civilized  reader  will  prove  but  a  pale  shadow  of 
the  dread  reality.  When  speaking  of  Russian  prisons  and 
Russian  convicts,  ordinary  expressions  fail  to  convey  the 
meaning  intended.  Nor  is  it  a  question  of  mere  intensity, 
but  of  kind.  The  song  has  to  be  transposed  into  a  wholly 
different  key.  The  dry  matter-of-fact  report  from  which  I 
have  been  hitherto  quoting  speaks  of  the  prison  buildings  in 
the  following  terms  :  — 

"  Nearly  all  the  etapes  of  the  Government  of  Astrakhan  are  filthy  mud 
hovels,  heated  only  during  two  months  of  the  year,  and  then  insuffi- 
ciently and  only  with  the  roots  and  branches  of  a  shrub  called  tshilish- 
nik.  Scarcely  a  single  prison  is  provided  with  a  female  section,  and 
when  this  section  does  exist  it  is  a  dog-kennel,  a  stable,  a  black  hole  — 
anything  but  a  place  to  hve  in.  The  prisons  themselves  are  at  best  mere 
dark,  low  hovels  built  to  accommodate  from  five  to  six  men,  the  cost  of 
erecting  them  amounting  to  no  more  than  from  ;^lo  to  ;i^i5  each.  The 
only  place  where  I  saw  good  ])risons  was  in  the  Sterlitamak  district. 
The  prisons  of  the  district  of  Tshistopol  and  part  of  the  Laisheff  district 
are  well  built,  but  kept  in  a  disgustingly  filthy  state.  The  Fodlessensky 
etape  (district  of  Ufa)  was  a  complete  ruin,  its  stove  crumbling  to 
pieces,  its  roof  fallen  in,  the  earthen  floor  burrowed  to  such  an  extent 
by  pigs  that  these  animals  came  in  freely  from  the  streets  to  the  prison- 
ers' rooms.  This  was  duly  reported  to  the  authorities,  and  when,  sev- 
eral years  later,  I  was  again  passing  through  the  village  of  rodlessnoie, 
I  yielded  to  my  curiosity  to  examine  it.  There  were  some  traces  of 
improvement;  the  roof  had  been  repaired  with  tree  bark,  the  stove, 
which  had  only  been  recently  put  up,  smoked  terribly,  and  the  pigs  of 
the  place  went  on  with  their  destructive  work  as  before."  - 

It  is  no  easy  matter  to  reahze  fully  what  is  meant  by  the 
words  "  insufficiently  heated,"  that  one  meets  with  so  often 

1  Law  Messenger,  No.  ii.,  p.  343.  ^  ibid.,  p.  342. 


120  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

in  these  reports.  "In  the  winter  of  1882,"  says  the  same 
authority  — 

"  in  the  Salikhovsky  etape  prison  (district  of  Ufa)  I  was  shown  a  barrel 
of  water  destined  to  be  drunk  by  the  prisoners;  it  was  covered  over 
with  a  large  piece  of  ice  that  had  become  detached  by  thawing  a  little 
at  the  edges,  and  was  five  and  a  quarter  inches  thick.  This  barrel,  I 
should  mention,  is  7tever  taken  out  of  the  room  in  which  the  prisoners 
live.  This  prison,  like  so  many  others,  is  only  heated  a  few  hours  be- 
fore the  arrival  of  a  convict  party,  and  sometimes  not  even  then,  and 
when  heated  the  stove  yields  more  smoke  than  heat.  The  prison  floor 
there  was  so  rotten  that  tnie  of  the  jilanks  broke  under  me,  and  it  was 
not  without  difficulty  that  I  got  my  foot  out  of  the  deep  hole  that  re- 
sulted. It  was  on  this  floor  that  the  prisoners  had  to  sleep,  with  abso- 
lutely nothing  under  them,  for  there  were  not  even  any  plank  beds. 
The  '  Elder '  of  the  convict  party  complained  of  the  weakness  of  the 
bolts,  etc.,  and,  with  two  fingers  of  one  hand  twisted  and  bent  with 
ease  the  tin  bars  on  the  windows."  i 

"  On  the  premises  of  Uie  Tshookadytamak  etape  (near  Belybay)  the 
prison  warder  lives  with' his  family,  and  he  uses  the  common  room  in 
which  the  prisoners  sleep,  eat,  drink,  and  live  as  a  sheep-pen;  early  in 
the  morning,  before  the  departure  of  the  convicts,  I  myself  saw  that 
while  the  convicts  were  still  sleeping  on  their  plank  Ijeds,  there  were 
thirty  head  of  sheep  and  goats  quartered  immediately  under  the  plank 
beds.'^  The  etape  of  the  wealthy  village  of  Ale.xeievsk  (district  of  Men- 
zelinsk)  is  situated  in  an  underground  cellar.  The  Uslonsky  etape  near 
Kazan  is  a  mere  wooden  cage  19I  feet  square.  It  has  no  sections  or 
partitions  whatever,  not  even  an  ante-room;  the  floor  is  earthen.  In 
March,  1S82,  a  convict  gang  of  twenty-seven  prisoners  and  fifteen  Cos- 
sacks arrived;  the  Cossacks  were  billeted  in  the  neighboring  huts, 
while  the  twenty-seven  prisoners,  thoroughly  fagged  out  after  a  day's 
journey  of  30  versts,  carrying  their  effects  along  with  them,  were  shut 
up  in  this  dungeon."'* 

It  is  difficult  to  read  the  cahn,  matter-of-fact  account  of  how 
these  miserable  wretches  passed  that  terrible  night  without  a 
shudder. 

"They  lay  stretched  out  on  the  planks;  they  sat  on  their  heels  on  the 
plank  beds  and  under  them;  they  stood  up  shoulder  to  shoulder  on 
the  ground  from  7  P.M.  till  8  A.M.  A  portion  of  the  ])lanks  broke  down; 
the  windows  had  to  be  smashed  in  order  to  let  in  a  blast  of  cold  air; 
there  was  no  fire  in  the  stove,  and  the  common  night-vessel  was  stand- 
ing in  the  room,  but  it  was  utterly  impossible  for  any  one  to  get  near 
it."  « 

"It  is  not  my  intention,"  the  writer  significantly  adds,  "to 
give  even  an  inadequate  picture  of  some  certain  kinds  of 
prison  horrors.     A  glance  at  the  official  documents  in  the 

1  Law  Messenger,  No.  ii.  3  JUd. 

2  Ibid.  -i  Ibid. 


RUSSIAN    prisons:     the    simple    truth.  121 

offices  of  the  military  commanders  of  the  eight  Volga  Gov- 
ernments would  be  rewarded  by  the  discovery  of  materials 
enough  to  fill  up  the  outline."  ^ 

A  Russian- gentleman  named  Ptitsin  was  sent  some  time 
ago  in  a  purely  official  capacity  to  Siberia,  where  he  acquit- 
ted liimself  in  a  most  conscientious  manner  of  the  difficult 
mission  with  which  he  was  entrusted,  carefully  examining 
the  prisons,  many  of  which  Mr.  Kennan  never  saw.  He 
drew  u])  a  lengthy  report,  which  was  duly  pigeon-holed,  as 
such  reports  usually  are,  part  of  which  he  recently  published 
with  the  permission  of  the  authorities,  accorded  with  a  very 
bad  grace.  This  unimpeachable  document  is  a  complete 
confirmation  of  the  report  inserted  in  the  Law  Messenger. 
Notwithstanding  the  statistical  brevity  and  lack  of  consecu- 
tiveness  which  characterize  the  style  of  both  these  docu- 
ments, a  few  extracts  from  them  is  better  calculated,  I 
believe,  to  convey  to  Englishmen  a  correct  idea  of  what 
prison  life  in  Russia  really  is  than  the  most  vivid  description 
given  by  the  most  impartial  of  their  countrymen.- 

AU  along  the  Yakootsk  tract,  M.  Ptitsin  virtually  tells  us, 
the  Government  really  does  nothing,  or  next  to  nothing,  for 
the  prisoners.  Thus  the  cost  of  forwarding  the  convicts 
along  this  immense  tract  falls  directly  upon  the  peasants, 
who  are  as  poor  as  country  mice.  It  is  they,  indigent  as 
they  are,  who  have  to  build  the  prisons  at  every  post  station, 
and  keep  them  in  repair.  That  they  fiiil,  lamentably  fail, 
to  discharge  these  duties  is  natural,  nay,  inevitable  ;  but» 
whoever  is  to  blame,  the  victims  are  always  the  wretched 
prisoners.  Take,  for  instance,  the  forwarding  prison  of 
Katschoog  (236  versts  from  Irkutsk)  ;  the  rooms  there,  M. 
Ptitsin  affirms,  have  only  single  windows,  although  in  the 
streets  the  mercury  registers  at  times  79  degrees  of  cold 
(Fahr.),  with  the  result  that  in  one  room  built  to  accom- 
modate forty  men  at  most  the  temperature  is  39°  Fahr., 
even  when  one  hundred  persons  are  passing  the  night  there. 
In  Verkholensk  prison,  we  learn  from  the  same  authority, 


1  It  is  very  curious,  that  in  the  face  of  these  things  known  and  proclaimed 
even  in  Russia  itself,  men,  and  Englishmen,  who  know  nothing  of  the  lan- 
guage and  customs  of  the  country  and,  if  possible,  still  less  about  its  prison 
system,  should  solemnly  assure  us  that  "on  the  whole  there  is  no  doubt  that 
the  Russian  Government  treats  its  prisoners  far  better  than  we  in  England 
are  inclined  to  give  it  credit  for."  —  De  Windt,  op.  cit.,  p.  411. 

-  M.  Ftitsin's  account  was  published  in  the  December  issue  of  the 
Northern  Messetiger,  a  Russian  monthly  magazine  which  appears  in  St. 
Petersburg. 


122  RUSSIAN   TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

there  are  but  two  rooms,  very  low,  eight ^arsheens  (20  feet) 
long,  and  six  arsheens  (15  feet)  wide.  THe  prisoners  receive 
fifteen  copecks  a  day  to  live  upon.  They  coni])lained  to  M. 
Ptitsin  that  the  jailer  who  purchased  for  them  the  bread  on 
which  they  lived  gave  them  a  very  bad  ciuality,  while  the 
governor  of  the  prison  —  a  brutal  peasant  —  beat  them-and 
their  guards  likewise  most  mercilessly  in  his  drunken  fits. 

The  Tiumen  forwarding  prison,  a  low  hut  constructed  for 
the  accommodation  of  twenty  convicts,  frequently  contains 
eighty.  Some  of  the  prisoners  whom  M.  Ptitsin  found  there 
had  no  clothes,  nothing  but  their  linen,  and  this  in  the  month 
of  February  (1883).  Thus  he  mentions  the  convicts  Goos- 
yeff  and  Goltakoff  by  name,  whom  he  found  in  this  pitiable 
])light.  The  authorities,  questioned  on  the  matter,  informed 
him  that  they  had  sold  their  clothes ;  the  convicts,  on  the 
contrary,  assured  him  that  they  had  been  stolen  from  them. 
When  the  stove  was  heated  many  of  the  prisoners  were 
asphyxiated,  and  were  with  difficulty  restored  to  life. 

The  Karkinskaia  prison  is  a  low  unheated  hut  built  for 
twenty  men,  but  occupied  by  parties  of  from  eighty  to  a 
hundred,  who  arrive  every  week.  The  convicts  declared 
the  Ponomareffsky  prison  a  magnificent  place  by  comparison, 
and  yet  they  were  squeezed  together  there  like  herrings  in 
a  barrel.  To  avoid  death  by  asphyxiation  the  door  was  left 
open  all  night,  although  the  thermometer  registered  25° 
below  zero  (Fahr.). 

From  Gruznovsky  Station  (the  seventeenth  from  Irkutsk) 
to  the  town  of  Kirensk  on  the  Lena,  an  extent  of  540  versts, 
there  are  no  prisons,  the  convicts  being  quartered  on  the 
peasants.  The  forwarding  prison  of  Ust-Kutsk  has  but  two 
cells  almost  dark,  which  can  .accommodate  three  men  each 
at  a  pinch.  They  do  not  possess  a  stove  or  other  heating 
apparatus.  There  are  generally  five,  sometimes,  though 
rarely,  ten  men  in  each  room,  who  remain  at  times  as  long 
as  fifteen  days.  No  food  whatever  is  allowed  thejn,  nor 
money  to  hay  it.  Every  second  day  the  jailer  leads  them  to 
the  village  to  solicit  alms.  What  they  get  in  this  way  is  their 
only  means  of  supporting  life)     When  the  prison  can  hold 


1  It  is  instructive,  or  ought  to  be,  to  note  the  light  in  which  an  EngHsh- 
inan,  who  could,  had  he  wished,  have  studied  the  subject  before  writing 
upoii  it,  puts  this  same  fact  mixed  up  with  some  fiction  before  his  readers. 
"The  criminals  (as  distinguished  from  politicals)  have  no  complaint  what- 
ever to  make  as  to  food  and  clothing;  each  man  has  two  pounds  of  black 
bread,  three-quarters  of  a  pound  of  meat,  and  a  small  allowance  of  quass 


RUSSIAN    PRISONS:     THE    SIMPLE    TRUTH.  123 

no  more,  the  prisoners  are  quartered  on  the  peasants,  but  as 
the  latter  discuss  and  dchberate,  and  squabble  among  them- 
selves in  choosing  their  prisoners  (chiefly  by  their  looks, 
each  one  anxious  to  obtain  a  convict  who  is  comparatively 
harmless),  the  wretched  exiles  are  left  freezing  in  the  open 
air,  it  may  be  six  hours  at  a  time,  till  some  decision  ic  taken.' 
In  one  party  there  was  a  woman  with  child.  She  was  deliv- 
ered in  the  cell.  There  was  no  help  near  and  she  died, 
leaving  three  small  children,  an  old  mother  and  her  husband, 
all  bound  for  Siberia. 

It  would  be  misleading  were  I  to  omit  to  state  that  at 
some  places  in  the  mines  life,  for  the  non-political  convicts 
at  least,  is  tolerable,  almost  human,  by  comparison  with  this, 
although  they  are  compelled  to  work  on  Sundays  and  holi- 
days. 

The  Sookhovsk  forwarding  prison,  M.  Ptitsin  informs  us, 
consists  of  two  cells  "  almost  pitch  dark,"  made  to  accom- 
modate ten  men.  The  majority  of  the  prisoners  live  on 
alms  alone.  The  same  story  is  told  by  the  author  of  the 
report  on  the  prison  system  which  appeared  in  the  Law 
Messenger.     To  begin  with,  we  there  read  :  — 

"The  prisoners  hcwe  no  clothes  to  put  on  them.  I  examined  their 
linen,  clothes,  and  boots  in  scores  of  provincial  prisons,  and  I  was  always 
struck  by  impracticability  in  the  conception  and  dishonesty  in  the  man- 
ufacture of  these  articles  of  necessity.  The  underclothing  was  always 
old,  torn,  and  with  very  faint  traces  of  having  been  washed.  The  cut 
of  it  was  invariably  absurd  :  the  drawers,  for  example,  are  sewn  out  of 
two  pieces  of  cloth  into  a  perfect  triangle,  so  that  unless  you  rip  it  up, 
it  is  impossil:)le  to  get  inside  of  it  or  put  it  on;  the  legs  below  the 
knees  are  uncovered;  the  shirts,  not  meeting  at  the  collar  even  on  the 
slenderest  neck,  leave  the  entire  chest  and  the  arms  below  the  shoul- 
ders unprotected.  The  boots  are  mere  slippers  as  shallow  as  goloshes. 
The  clothing  for  the  most  part  consists  of  one  tunic,  a  parody  on  the 
liiblical  tunic,  which  buttons  nowhere,  and  in  which  no  man  can  work. 
It  is  true  that  in  the  convict  battalions  cloth  trousers  and  jackets  are 
given,  and  convict  gangs  on  the  march  are  supplied  with  short  over- 
coats and  ear-coverings;   but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  should  be  borne  in 


daily.  This,  it  must  be  remembered,  is  what  the  Government  actually  alloios 
hint  [italics  mine].  He  may  make  what  he  can  on  the  road  in  addition  to 
this  by  soliciting  ahns  from  travellers  and  caravans.  .  .  .  Imagine  a  convict 
travelling  from  Portland  to  Dartmoor  being  allowed  to  beg  at  the  railway 
stations!"  —  De  Windt,  op.  cit.,  p.  411. 

1  "  No  travelling  is  done  in  winter,"  Mr.  de  Windt  assures  us.    Now  this_ 
is  a  very  grave  mistake.     In  Europe  and  Siberia  they  cease  travelling  dur-' 
ing  the  wet  season,  which  lasts  from  three  to  eight  weeks.     But  in  the  inte- 
rior of  Russia,  as  well  as  in  the  interior  of  Siberia,  convicts  continue  to 
journey  on  foot  during  the  whole  winter.    Cf.  for  ex.  the  Law  Messenger, 
No.  iv.  p.  638. 


124  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

mind  that  the  majority  of  prisoners  in  district  and  jirovincial  prisons, 
both  in  the  interior  of  the  ostrog  and  outside  of  it,  work  in  a  frost  of 
58^^  Fahr.i  And  thus  at  last  it  comes  to  pass  that  a  compromise  is 
agreed  to  between  the  prisoners  and  their  jailers;  the  convicts  dress 
themselves,  ami  the  jirison  inspector  contiimes  to  send  in  his  accounts 
for  the  mending,  washing,  and  repairing  of  clothing  and  linen  which 
are  really  never  repaired,  washed,  or  mended."  ^ 

Concerning  the  question  of  food,  the  same  authority 
writes  :  —  • 

"  I  can  safely  assert  that  of  the  100,000  inmates  of  Russian  prisons 
less  than  one-third  live  on  prison  rations.  Estimating  at  10  copecks  a 
day  the  money  value  of  the  food  of  each  of  the  prisoners,  this  one  item 
alone  gives  us  more  than  two  million  roubles  a  year  that  are  taken  from 
the  Crown  and  go  to  people  who  have  no  right  whatever  to  appropriate 
it.  In  most  of  th«  prisons  visited  by  me  the  rations  are  distributed  as 
nearly  as  possible  in  the  following  manner:  to  tiuo-thirds  of  the  total 
number  of  convicts  nothing  whatever  is  given.  On  two-thirds  of  the 
quantity  of  food  actually  doled  out  only  about  one-fifth  of  the  prisoners 
are  fed.  The  remainder  of  the  rations  falls  to  the  convict-bakers,  cooks, 
tramps  and  other  oligarchs.  It  can  scarcely  appear  surprising  under  the 
circumstances  that  tlie  ordinary  prisoners  (or  tsheldotii),  as  distinguished 
from  the  ringleaders,  have  to  make  the  best  they  can  of  hot  water  in 
which  a  grain  or  two  of  corn  and  a  rag  of  cabbage  are  swimming 
about."  3 

In  the  Krassnoyarovsk  forwarding  prison,  M.  Ptitsin  re- 
ports, "one  third  of  the  prisoners  receive  absolutely  no  food'''' ; 
they  Hve  solely  on  what  they  receive  in  alms  from  the  peas- 
ants>  who  are  very  little  better  off  than  they  are  themselves. 
The  peasants  bitterly  complain  of  this,  and  also  of  the  terri- 
ble responsibility  that  weighs  upon  them  ;  for  if  a  prisoner 
dies  while  he  is  the  "guest"  of  a  peasant,  the  latter  has  to 
pass  through  no  end  of  circumlocution  offices,  leaving  his 
work  and  incurring  serious  trouble  and  expense  before  the 
inquiry  can  be  brought  to  a  satisfactory  issue.  "  There  are 
often  as  many  as  twenty  sick  persons  in  a  gang,  but  the 
peasants,  apprehensive  that  they  should  die  on  the  way, 
hoist  the  invalids  into  the  tumbril  and  hurry  them  off  to  the 
next  station,  no  matter  what  disease  they  may  be  suffering 
from  ;  "  '  typhus  fever,  smallpox,  or  rheumatic  fever. 

"The  Kirensk  prison  (974  versts  from  Irkutsk)  is  a  wooden  building 
surrounded  by  a  palisade.  It  is  so  old  and  dilapidated  that  were  it  not 
propi)ed  up  with  wooden  supports  it  would  tumble  down  immediately. 
A  convict  stuck  his  fmger  into  the  wooden  wall,  into  which  it  entered 

1  Law  Messenger,  No.  iv.  p.  625. 

2  Ibid.  3  Ibid.  p.  626. 

4  Cf.  M.  Ptitsin's  Report,  Northern  Messenger,  December,  1889. 


RUSSIAN  prisons:   the  simple  truth.        125 

as  into  butter  or  soft  snow,  so  rotten  was  it.  The  ceiling  fell  down  in 
1883  and  buried  a  prisoner,  who  was  fortunately  dug  out  alive.  The 
inspector  complains  that  since  1882  the  convicts  receive  no  prison  garb, 
no  socks,  no  warm  goloshes,  no  clothes  of  any  description,  so  that  they 
can  neither  work  nor  walk.  The  prisoners  complained  of  the  over- 
crowding of  tlic  rooms,  so  that  they  frequently  have  to  sleep  not  only 
on  the  ground  but  under  the  plank  beds:  thus  in  room  No.  i  six  con- 
victs slept  under  the  plank  beds;  in  No.  2  five;  in  No.  3  nine;  in  Nos. 
4  and  6  eleven.  There  is  no  hospital;  the  sick  are  located  in  the  civil 
hospital,  which  is  described  in  the  Governmental  report  as  surpassing 
in  iilthiness  anything  that  was  ever  seen  or  heard  of  even  in  Siberia. 
The  floor  of  the  corridor  through  which  the  patients  have  to  pass  to 
the  water-closet  is  covered  with  a  thick  coating  of  ice  which  is  soaked 
through  and  through  with  the  fi)ul  liquids  that  flow  from  the  water- 
closet,  which  is  never  cleaned.  The  sick  and  dying  lie  generally  on 
the  floor  which  is  so  thickly  strewn  with  them  that  there  is  no  passage 
through  the  room.  There  they  lie  crying  and  wailing,  and  complaining 
of  their  specific  sufferings  and  of  the  cold  —  for  they  are  almost  naked 
and  have  not  wherewith  to  cover  themselves.  The  visitor  standing  in 
the  room  with  his  furs  on  and  his  head  covered  found  the  cold  l)arely 
tolerable.  One  room  was  occupied  by  male  and  female  syphilitic  pa- 
tients thrown  together  indiscriminately,  and  under  a  table  in  a  corner 
of  the  room  two  small  children,  about  two  or  three  years  old,  were 
crawling  about  like  little  puppies.  There  was  no  room  for  them  else- 
where. The  convicts  who  come  here  have  to  remain  in  this  corridor, 
as  there  is  no  accommodation  for  them  in  the  rooms."  ^ 

.On  the  17th  February,  M.  Ptitsin  found  X20  prisoners  from 
Irkutsk  there,  of  whom  seven,  down  with  typhus  fever,  were 
in  the  throes  of  death  and  three  were  frostbitten.  They 
were  all  laid  on  the  floor  of  that  corridor.  One  of  the  party 
from  Irkutsk  died  from  the  cold.^ 

The  food  supply,  at  all  times  insufficient,  ceases  altogether 
at  times  for  several  hundred  miles  at  a  stretch,  which  may 
mean  some  weeks,  or  even  months.  At  Ulkansky,  Kras- 
noyarovsky,  and  other  stations,  complaints  were  made  to 
M.  Ptitsin  that  convicts  were  sent  up  without  warm  clothes, 

1  Northern  Messenger,  December,  1889. 

2  Cf.  M.  Ptitsin's  Report,  loc.  cit.  In  the  light  of  the  above  it  is  enter- 
taining to  read  the  following :  "  Personally  I  would  very  much  sooner 
undergo  a  term  of  imprisonment  for  a  criminal  offence  in  Siberia  than  in 
England."  —  A  Journey  from  Calais  to  /^^^/«,  p.  448.  If  the  example  of 
these  two  gentlemen,  Messrs.  Lansdell  and  De  Windt,  does  not  put  the 
British  public  once  for  all  on  its  guard  against  glowing  accounts  of  Russian 
prisons,  finances,  universities,  or  other  institutions,  it  richly  deserves  to  be 
kept  in  that  gross  ignorance  of  everytliing  Russian  in  which  it  has  help- 
lessly floundered  so  long.  One  cannot  but  regret  the  unjustifiable  way  in 
which  a  portion  of  the  English  press,  working  in  the  interest  of  cant,  con- 
tributes to  perpetuate  this  lamentable  ignorance  atjout  Russia.  Thus  this 
morning's  Standard  (19th  June,  1890),  in  a  telegram  from  St.  Petersburg, 
informs  the  British  public  that  the  International  Prison  (Congress  now  sit- 
ting at  St.  Petersburg  has  proved  a  complete  success! 


126  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

and  also  without  food  or  money  to  buy  them.  Nearly  all 
convict  parties  from  Kircnsk  to  Wittim  are  forwarded  with- 
out any  food  supply  whatever.  They  live  as  best  they  can 
on  alms.^ 

No  wonder  that  the  miserable  men  thus  treated  strip 
themselves  almost  naked,  and  part  with  their  clothes  to 
their  fellow  prisoners  for  a  ridiculously  small  sum,  and  pur- 
chase food  or  temporary  oblivion  with  the  proceeds.  'Fhis 
is  frequently  practised  in  the  depth  of  a  Siberian  winter, 
when  the  mercury  is  at  the  bottom  of  ordinary  thermom- 
eters, at  depths  undreamt  of  in  England.  The  men  who  do 
this  form  a  numerous  class  known  as  the  "  Naked  People." 
M.  Ptitsin  met  hundreds  of  them  in  Siberia  ;  the  peasant, 
he  tells  us,  who  has  to  take  a  number  of  convicts  a  certain 
distance  on  the  way  to  their  destination,  is  always  in  great 
dread  lest  the  naked  people  should  freeze  to  death  while 
under  his  charge,  so  he  throws  a  coat  or  a  horse-cloth  round 
them,  puts  a  wisp  of  hay  or  straw  next  their  skin  to  ward  off 
the  cold,  and  drives  them  in  post  haste  to  the  next  station, 
where,  if  he  delivers  them  up  with  signs  of  life  still  discern- 
ible, he  breathes  freely  once  more,  for  the  burden  is  then 
shifted  on  to  another  peasant.  At  Skokinsk  and  Rischsk, 
M.  Ptitsin  saw  many  such  "naked  people,"  who  had  sold' 
their  clothes  and  purchased  food  or  drink,  or  both.  In 
•  Ust-Kutsk,  he  assures  us,  "  there  are  always  several  of  them 
in  each  party  who  dispose  of  their  clothes  for  money,  get  a 
few  rags  to  hide  their  nakedness  with,  and  put  hay  next  the 
skin  to  keep  the  cold  out."  ^ 

Between  Gruznovsk  and  Kirensk,  on  the  Lena,  one  is 
continuously  meeting  "  naked  people,"  dressed  only  in 
their  shirt  and  drawers.  If  we  bear  in  mind  that  the  ther- 
mometer often  registers  as  many  as  35°  below  zero,  and 
67°  below  freezing  point  (Fahr.),  we  can  understand  why  it 
is  that  some  people  die  of  cold.  The  old  coat  or  horse- 
cloth which  the  wary  peasant  lends  to  the  naked  convict,  he 
takes  off  him  at  the  next  station,  leaving  it  to  the  peasant  to 
whom  he  delivers  him  up  to  cover  him  up  temporarily  as 
best  he  may,  and  so  the  "  naked  convicts  "  are  hurried 
along  on  tumbrils  from  station  to  station,  till  they  arrive  at 
Kirensk,  where  if  delivered  alive,  they  are  soundly  flogged 
for  being  without  clothes.'"'  In  Surovsk  and  Diadinsk  the 
same  harrowing  spectacle  of  naked  wretches  shivering  from 

1  Northern  Messenger,  December,  i88p.  ^  Jdid,  ^  Ibid, 


RUSSIAN  prisons:   the  simple  truth.       127 

the  intense  cold,  some  frostbitten,  others  perhaps  dying, 
met  the  eye  of  the  St.  Petersburg  official.  "  In  the  Su- 
khovsk  prison,"  he  informs  us,  '*  by  far  the  greater  part  of 
the  convicts  live  solely  upon  alms."  In  the  Potapovsk  for- 
warding prison  they  receive  neither  money  nor  food,  and 
each  gang  as  a  rule  includes  from  four  to  ten  sick  men, 
besides  many  "naked  people."  ^ 

Men  and  women,  many  of  them  as  innocent  of  crime  as 
babes,  undergoing  torture  of  this  description,  would  be 
more  or  less  than  human  if  they  failed  to  snatch  at  any 
opportunity  that  offered  of  drowning,  even  for  a  short  time, 
their  misery,  and  forgetting  themselves  and  their  environ- 
ment, even  though  they  should  drift  thereby  into  nameless - 
crimes  and  hopeless  insanity.  The  prospect  of  transitory 
oblivion  is  enough  to  buoy  them  up  under  the  greatest  con- 
ceivable hardships.  "  Generally  speaking,"  says  the  matter- 
of-fact  report  published  in  the  Law  Messenger, 

"  prisoners  and  their  jailers  become  reconciled  to  all  imaginable  priva- 
tions and  extortions,  so  that  they  be  allowed  to  do  just  what  they  please. 
.  .  .  The  forbidden  fruit  of  the  prison  (the  vodka  with  its  foul- 
smelling  fusel  oil)  is  transformed  by  their  imagination  into  a  heavenly 
nectar,  and  it  must  be  admitted  that  Russian  prison  life  is  in  the  last 
degree  desolate  and  weird  for  people  with  sober  brains.  At  first  the 
money  given  for  food  (whenever  money  is  given)  is  spent  in  the  pur- 
chase of  spirits,  afterwards  the  prisoners'  clothing  is  disposed  of,  and 

then  both  guards  and  convicts  go  begging  for  alms Thus  the 

day  is  spent  and  night  draws  nigh,  and  the  eiape  prison  is  metamor- 
phosed into  a  terrible  hell  upon  earth.  The  poisonous  fumes  turn 
every  one's  head.  Neither  age  nor  sex  is  recognized  or  respected  in 
the  wild  glutting  of  brutal  instincts.  Every  attempt  at  resistance  is 
speedily  overcome  by  dint  of  blows  of  the  fist  and  strokes  given  with 
the  butt  end  of  ritles.  If  during  the  scuffle  a  convict  runs  away,  on  the 
morrow  a  general  hunt  is  organized,  and  the  wretch  'vhen  caught  is 
beaten  to  death.  It  also  comes  to  pass,  as  in  Orenburg  in  the  spring  of 
188 J,  that  when,  those  7uho  run  away  are  not  overtaken,  one  or  more  of 
those  who  remained  behind  are  deliberately  killed,  and  a  report  drawn 
up  setting  forth  that  'three  ran  away,  shots  were  fired  at  them,  and  one 
of  the  three  was  killed,  while  the  other  two  escaped.''  "  2 

1  Northern  Messenger,  December,  1889. 

2  "  Accustomed  as  he  is  to  English  ways,"  says  Madame  Novikoff  ap- 
provingly of  Mr.  de  Windt  (I  am  quoting  tcxtually  from  the  Review  of 
Reviews,  as  I  have  not  been  able  to  procure  the  journal  in  whicli  that  lady 
wrote  her  article),  "he  cannot  understand  why  Russians  should  manifest 
such  compassion  as  they  do  for  criminals."  Quite  so.  If  thev  murdered  a 
few  thousands  more  (of  the  most  wretched)  every  year  and  put  them  on 
the  list  of  prisoners  shot  while  attempting  to  escape,  they  would  not  be  lay- 
ing themselves  open  to  an  accusation  of  deeper  immorality  than  at  present, 
and  they  would  assuredly  have  a  somewhat  stronger  claim  to  be  termed 
compassionate. 


128  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

"  During  these  nocturnal  orgies  the  manager  of  the  etape 
is  occasionally  attacked  for  his  extortions  or  for  cheating  at 
cards,  and  the  frightful  scenes  that  occurred  in  Alexeievsk 
are  rehearsed."  ^  Sometimes  skirmishes,  or  rather  real 
battles,  occur  between  prisoners  and  soldiers,  the  latter 
laying  siege  to  the  ctape,  and  many  are  wounded,  mutilated, 
killed,  as  happened  at  Alexeievsk.  "  I  visited  this  prison  a 
week  after  this  had  occurred  (it  was  in  1S83),  and  I  saw  all 
the  traces,  still  fresh,  of  a  regular  siege."  '^ 

But  are  there  not  such  institutions,  one  may  ask,  as  Prison 
Boards?  Are  there  not  humane  prison  directors  in  Russia, 
where  only  one  year  ago  men  like  Galkin-Vrasky  were 
exhausting  the  resources  of  a  rich  tongue  in  eulogies  of 
John  Howard  and  of  Venning,  and  were  discussing  with 
scrupulous  minuteness  the  application  of  the  very  latest 
discoveries  of  science  to  the  amelioration  of  the  unhappy 
prisoner's  lot?  The  answer  to  this  pertinent  question,  in  so 
far  as  it  is  not  implicitly  contained  in  the  foregoing,  may  be 
given  in  the  unimpassioned  words  of  the  specialist,  whose 
report  appears  in  the  Law  Messefiger :  — 

"  The  Prison  Board  belongs  to  the  number  of  those  collegiate  insti- 
tutions which  exist  solely  on  paper,  and  the  members  of  which,  to  use 
a  popular  expression,  arc  strollers.  The  members  of  this  Board,  each' 
engrossed  liy  his  own  private  affairs,  meet  together  at  a  fixed  time  on 
the  days  on  which  the  Secretary  has  prepared  the  reports,  drawn  up 
without  previous  consultation  or  discussion.  .  .  .  They  then  hastily 
sign  these  dry  documents,  and  hurry  away  each  to  his  own  concerns."  "^ 

Another  great  impediment  to  prison  reform,  if  the  Govern- 
ment were  seriously  minded  to  undertake  it,  is  the  rekictance 
of  the  prisoners  to  utter  a  complaint  against  their  jailers, 
who  often  treat  them  like  vermin,  or  against  their  fellows,  who 


1  Law  Messenger,  1890,  No.  ii.  p.  344. 

2  In  1883  there  was  a  battle,  or  rather  a  series  of  them,  between  convicts 
and  soldiers  at  the  prison  of  Alexeievsk;  it  was  stormed  at  last  after  a 
regular  siege.  Are  these  things  usually  reported  and  commented  upon  in 
this  country  by  zealous  travellers  anxious  to  spread  among  their  country- 
men the  truth  about  Russia? 

8  La%u  Afessenger,  No.  ii.  p.  334.  This  being  so,  one  is  at  a  loss  to  un- 
derstand whv  certain  English  journals  were  lately  so  ecstatically  jubilant  on 
learning  that  Madame  Novikoff  had  been  appointed  a  member  of  the 
Prison  "Board  of  St.  Petersburg,  seeing  that  she  has  so  little  opportunity  for 
ventilating  her  humanitarian  "views.  At  the  same  time  it  seems  doubtful 
whether  and  to  what  extent  Russian  prisons  would  benefit  by  the  applica- 
tion of  the  ideas  of  a  lady  who,  knowing  her  own  country  as  she  does,  is 
vet  profoundly  convinced,  that  compared  with  the  treatment  of  prisoners  in 
England,  that' of  convicts  in  Russia  sins  on  the  side  of  leniency  and  tender- 
ness. 


RUSSIAN    PRISONS  :     THE    SIMPLE    TRUTH.  1 29 

can  maim,  woulid,  torture,  and  kill  them  with  perfect  im- 
punity. "  It  is  a  Herculean  feat,"  we  read  in  the  report 
which  has  been  largely  quoted, 

"to  prevail  upon  any  one  to  utter  a  complaint  in  prison.  The  prison 
inspectors  connive  at  much,  and  allow  the  '  oligarchs  '  to  do  just  what 
they  think  fit  with  the  ordinary  convicts  (Tsheldoni).  And  thus  it 
happens  that  wliile  these  fellows  are  eating  to  satiety,  smoking,  play- 
ing cards,  and  drinking  till  they  fall  helpless  to  the  floor,  and  have  free 
access  to  the  female  section,  the  unfortunate  man  who  will  be  set  free 
perhaps  to-morrow  (and  is  not  a  convict  at  all),  has  to  endure  the 
pangs  of  hunger  and  cold,  to  go  about  almost  naked,  and  to  live  worse 
than  any  beast  of  the  field."  ^ 

Every  inmate  of  a  Russian  prison  is  well  aware  that  to  prefer 
a  complaint  would  not  only  not  have  the  effect  intended,  but* 
would  not  fail  to  work  woe  to  the  complainer.  The  Prison 
Board,  it  is  true,  has  imposed  on  the  Police  Superintendent, 
or  the  Ispravnik,  on  the  local  doctor,  the  assistant  procuror, 
and  the  justice  of  peace  the  duty  of  visiting  the  prisons,  in 
addition  to  which  the  governor  and  the  procuror  go  when- 
ever they  feel  disposed  and  see  for  themselves. 

But  whenever  any  of  these  personages  is  about  to  visit  the 
prison,  his  intention  is  known  beforehand,  and  "  both  prison 
authorities  and  convicts  combine  to  hide  all  signs  and  traces 
of  the  scandals  that  are  continually  taking  place  among  them, 
'so  as  not  to  make  fools  of  themselves.'"  To  this  course 
they  are  impelled  by  admitted  solidarity  of  interests,  and  so 
they  hide  not  merely  the  vodka  and  cards,  but  even  the  tea- 
pots, the  cups,  nay,  their  own  shirts  and  other  harmless 
objects.  The  mutual  dissatisfaction  of  jailers  and  prisoners 
is  smothered  for  the  nonce,  and  '■'■ '  We  are  all  well  satisfied 
with  everything,  your  nobility,'  is  the  unanimous  cry  with 
which  the  humane  visitor  is  greeted."  -  A  prisoner  foolhardy 
enough  to  introduce  a  discordant  note  into  this  sweet  har- 
mony would  soon  lose  his  voice  and  his  life  to  boot.  Posi- 
tively inhuman  tortures  beyond  anything  here  described  are 
needed  to  rouse  up  the  prisoners  and  make  them  stand  up 
in  their  genuine  shape  and  form  and  give  expression  to  some 
of  the  thoughts  that  are  crowding  their  minds.'^  "  The 
Governor  of  Toblosk,"  we  read  in  the  Novoye  Vremya, 

"  lately  made  an  inspection  of  the  district  cities  and  volosts,  and  rumors 
of  his  intended  visit  reached  the  parties  interested  as  early  as  January 
(1890).     The  administration  of  the  district  was  up  and  doing.     For 

I  liQrV}  Messenger,  No,  iv.,  p.  626.        '-  Ibid.,  No.  ii.,  p.  334,        3  IM, 


130  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

weeks  before  the  time  fixed  for  the  visit,  messengers'  and  couriers  were 
unceasingly  rushing  about  on  horseback  from  the  district  cities  to  the 
volosts  and  back  again,  delivering  the  most  stringent  orders,  and  direc- 
tions about  the  clearing  of  the  streets,  etc.,  and,  above  all  (this  was  the 
chief  burden  of  their  message),  coinnianding  that  tinder  no  circum- 
stances should  any  petitions,  requests,  or  complaints  about  the  adminis- 
tration be  allowed  to  reach  the  ear  of  the  highborn  visitor."  1 

That  complaints  when  made,  inquired  into,  and  found  just 
prove  as  effective  as  would  be  the  whistling  of  jigs  to  a  mile- 
stone, is  apparent  from  the  solemn  statements  of  every  man 
and  woman  who  has  ever  spoken  en  connaissance  de  cause 
of  Russian  prisons,  whether  as  a  servant  or  a  prisoner  of  the 
Russian  Government. 

"The  complaints  of  many  provincial  doctors  (who  visit  the  prisons 
in  an  official  capacity),  concerning  the  injury  inflicted  on  the  health  of 
convicts  by  the  mode  in  which  they  are  confined,  and  the  abnormal 
conditions  of  their  existence,  remain  a  voice  crying  out  in  the  wilder- 
ness. Cases  have  come  under  my  notice  where  this  conscientious 
discharge  of  the  duties  imposed  upon  them  by  the  law,  was  '  recorded 
against  the  doctor  as  a  proof  of  his  disloyalty.'  "  ^ 

"  I  was  present  at  one  of  the  official  visits  of  the  Govern- 
ment procuror,"  says  the  same  author,  "and  when  the  cab- 
bage of  which  the  prisoner  complained  was  by  his  order 
brought  before  him,  and  he  saw  with  his  own  eyes  that  it 
positively  teemed  with  worms,  I  heard  hi/ii  command  the 
prisoner  to  eat  them  itp.'^  ^ 

The  sensational  element  in  all  this,  if  it  be  found  to  possess 
one,  must  be  admitted  to  be  inherent  in  the  facts  them- 
selves, which  are  certainly  striking,  even  should  it  be  proved 
that  the  miseries  described  are  inflicted  on  abandoned 
wretches  in  whose  souls  the  most  approved  purificatory 
processes,  human  or  divine,  would  fail  to  leave  the  slightest 
residuum  of  truth,  honesty,  or  humanity.  This,  however,  is  so 
far  from  being  proved  that  the  contrary  is  most  frequently 
the  case.  It  is  perhaps  needless  to  insist  on  the  circum- 
stance that  the  usual  crimes  and  misdemeanors  for  which  men 
are  sent  to  Siberia  or  to  prison  are  scarcely  heinous  enough 
to  justify  their  being  treated  worse  than  destructive  vermin. 
But  even  if  they  were,  the  justification  of  the  Russian  authori- 
ties would  be  as  far  off  as  before  ;  for  it  is  unfortunately  a 
fact,  and  a  lamentable  one,  that  tens  of  thousands  of  inno- 


1  Novoye  Vremya,  8th  April,  1890. 

2  Cf.  Law  Messenger,  No.  ii.,  p.  335. 
8  Ibid, 


RUSSIAN    PRISONS  :     THE    SIMPLE    TRUTH.  I3I 

cent  men  and  women,  known  and  officially  acknowledged  to 
be  innocent,  who  were  never  charged  with,  nay,  never  sus- 
pected of  crime,  subjects  of  the  Tsar  supposed  to  be  in  the 
full  and  perfect  enjoyment  of  those  extensive  civil  rights  of 
which  we  have  heard  so  much  of  late,  are  subjected  to  the 
worst  forms  of  the  treatment  described  above. 

Let  me  explain  what  must  seem  to  English  readers  a  riddle 
or  a  joke.  There  are  many  members  of  the  Mirs  (peasant 
societies  who  till  and  own  land  in  common),  who  for  no  more 
serious  misdemeanors  than  that  which  caused  the  Greeks 
to  ostracise  Aristides  are  expelled  from  their  community, 
without  trial  or  accusation,  and  sent  to  Siberia  by  the  Gov- 
ernment acting  on  the  suggestion  of  the  Mir.  The  judicious 
distribution  of  a  cask  of  vodka  by  a  rival  is  sometimes  quite 
sufficient  to  ruin  an  unoffending  man  in  this  way ;  and  even 
this  is  not  always  needed.  The  expelled  peasant  is  then 
deported  to  Siberia  along  with  cut-throats  and  highwaymen, 
shut  up  with  them  in  the  forwarding  prisons  for  months,  for 
years,  starved,  sent  on  for  hundreds  of  miles,  naked  or  nearly 
so,  crushed  down  by  the  privations  and  restrictions  for  which 
the  prison  authorities  are  responsible,  and  tortured  still  more 
acutely  by  the  inhuman  ruffians  into  whose  uncontrolled 
power  the  authorities  hand  him  over.  Whether  he  lives  or 
dies  under  this  treatment  no  man  cares. 

But  it  is  not  of  the  hard  lot  of  these  people  that  I  speak. 
Nor  yet  of  the  thousands  of  innocent  men  and  women  who 
are  kept  languishing  in  the  prisons  described  for  long  years, 
until  at  last  the  judgment  day  arrives  and  they  are  proved 
innocent.  They  are  subjected,  exactly  like  condemned  felons, 
to  the  treatment  just  detailed,  which  were  it  practised  in 
Africa  or  connived  at  in  Armenia,  would  speedily  call  forth 
all  the  latent  horror  of  which  a  correct  English  public  is  cap- 
able.i 


1  I  trust  it  is  needless  to  dwell  on  the  circumstance  that  this  paper  is 
written  from  a  humanitarian  and  therefore  a  purely  objective  point  of  view. 
It  is  certainly  not  meant  as  an  indirect  glorification  of  English  humani- 
tarianism.  Englishmen,  it  must  be  admitted,  arc  rarely  in  love  with  their 
own  laws  and  customs ;  but  those  who  happen  to  be,  and  who  feel  flattered 
by  the  contrast  afforded  by  the  present  record  of  Russia's  doings,  should 
remember  that  in  England  there  are  occasionally  abuses  to  reform  even  in 
the  prison  system.  The  following  is  doubtless  an  isolated  instance  and  was 
speedily  remedied,  but  this  is  no  reason  why  it  should  be  wholly  lost  sight 
of:  "  Shocking  Treatment  of  Prisoners.  —  Mr.  Justice  Wills,  at  tlie  Leices- 
ter Assizes,  yesterday,  called  attention  to  the  disgraceful  treatment  of 
prisoners  at  Leicester  Castle.  He  said  he  was  painfully  surprised  to  learn 
that  persons  waiting  for  trial  were  confined  in  boxes  which  were  2  feet  by 


132  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

But,  terrible  as  their  lot  is,  it  is  not  even  of  these  people 
that  I  am  speaking,  but  of  a  very  numerous  class  of  men  and 
women,  boys  and  girls,  who  are  wanted  by  the  authorities 
(not  on  account  of  crime,  but  for  other  reasons  —  to  give 
evidence,  for  instance)  —  or  sent  for  by  their  own  relatives  ; 
or  simply  because  they  have  accidentally  mislaid  their  pass- 
ports, or  are  kept  a  week  or  two  without  them  by  the  greedy 
official  (the  village /mar  or  secretary),  who  is  waiting  for  a 
larger  bribe.  All  these  people  are  imprisoned,  starved,  tor- 
tured, precisely  in  the  manner  described  above  ;  they  become 
subjects  of  the  oligarchs,  are  whipped,  beaten,  killed  ;  their 
sufferings  are  nowhere  recorded.  The  Russian  law  calls 
them  "  persons  accompanying  convict  parties,  not  in  the 
capacity  of  prisoners."  This  sounds  incredible.  It  is  grimly 
true.^  The  following  is  one  of  the  innumerable  ways  in  which 
it  comes  to  pass. 

A  peasant  leaves  his  home  to  seek  for  work  as  a  field 
laborer  wherever  he  can  find  work  to  do,  and,  like  every 
Russian,  male  and  female,  he  takes  his  passport  with  him, 
which  is  quite  as  much  a  part  of  him  as  his  soul  is.  It  is 
always  a  half-yearly  passport,  which  he  must  renew  at  the 
end  of  the  six  months,  sending  it  home  in  a  registered  letter 
to  the  pissar  of  his  native  place,  and  enclosing  the  legal  fee 
and  something  over  for  the  trouble.  The  time  of  renewal 
draws  near  ;  the  workman  gets  a  letter  written  to  \\\q.  pissar 
of  his  commune  requesting  a  new  passport.  The /mar,  like 
the  god  Baal  in  Elijah's  days,  is  pursuing,  or  is  on  a  journey, 
or,  peradventure,  he  sleepeth,  as  most  Russian  officials  do, 
and  must  be  awaked.  Whatever  the  cause,  he  does  not 
send  the  passport  in  time.  The  honest  working  man,  who 
is  earning  his  bread  in  the  sweat  of  his  brow,  and  by  the 
practice  perhaps  of  exceptional  sobriety  is  trying  to  earn  a 
pittance  for  his  family,  is  suddenly  arrested  and  "  sent  home 
hy  e tape  "  —  that-is,  is  flung  into  a  forwarding  prison,  whence 
he  emerges  to  join  one  of  those  convict  parties  just  described 
which  contain  the  cream  of  criminality,  and  is  ground  down 
and  made  to  suffer  hell's  torments  before  he  gets  home. 
When  he  arrives  he  gets  his  passport,  and  is  a  free  agent 


I  foot  8  inches.  It  shocked  his  sense  of  justice  that  they  should  be 
rendered  miserable  in  cupboards  in  which  no  lady  would  hang  her  dress. 
It  must  be  done  away  with,  as  it  was  intolerable  that  human  beings  should 
be  shut  up  in  places  which  were  unfit  for  the  accommodation  of  dogs." 
—  Daily  Telegraph,  November  30,  1889. 
1  Cf,  Law  Messenger,  1890,  ii,,  p.  336, 


RUSSIAN    PRISON'S:    THE    SIMPLE   TRUTH,  1 33 

once  more,  a  loyal  subject  of  his  little  father  the  Tsar,  M. 
Ptitsin  informs  the  (Government  that  when  he  visited  the 
Markovsk  prison  in  February,  1S83,  all  the  prisoners  there 
were  confined  only  for  passport  irregularities. 

Take  another  case.  The  daughter  of  a  Russian  official 
wishes  to  study  medicine  and  obtain  a  midwife's  certitlcate. 
Her  father  discourages  her  in  every  way ;  but  in  vain.  She 
leaves  home  without  his  permission,  and  goes  to  one  of  the 
university  towns  to  study.  Her  father  writes  a  letter  to  the 
poUce,  asking  that  she  be  sent  home  at  once,  and  she  is 
sent  as  a  convict ;  hungry,  naked,  insulted,  deflowered,  in 
time  only  her  dead  body  reaches  her  native  place  —  perhaps 
not  even  that. 

Or  take  another  case  :  A  soldier  is  sent  by  the  Govern- 
ment to  serve  at  Ak  Boolak  or  some  such  place,  thousands 
of  miles  away  from  his  native  village.  He  is  married  and 
thinks  that  life  with  his  wife  near  him  would  be  more  toler- 
able than  it  is  without  her,  and  he  requests  the  authorities 
to  forward  her  on.  They  accede  to  his  prayer,  arrest  the 
soldier's  wife  forthwith,  and  put  her  in  prison  till  a  convict 
party  is  organized,  which  she  is  sent  to  join ;  she  becomes 
one  of  this  dreary  family,  travels  several  thousand  miles  by 
etape,  sleeps  under  plank-beds,  is  maimed,  insulted,  vio- 
lated ;  this  goes  on  for  months  and  perhaps  years,  during 
which  she  cannot  take  a-  step  without  her  guards  until  she 
reaches  her  destination. 

" Unfortunately  she  does  not  always  reach  her  destination;  many  a 
soldier's  and  priest's  wife  arrives  in  such  a  pitiable  condition  that  she 
has  nothing  for  it  but  to  lay  violent  hands  upon  herself.  When  we 
undertook  to  Russianize  Central  Asia  thousands  of  soldiers'  wives  were 
thus  forwarded  by  etape  from  all  parts  of  Russia  to  their  husbands. 
Hard  by  Orenburg  there  is  a  little  bridge  across  the  river  Sakmar,  and 
many  a  soldier's  wife  has  cast  herself  from  it  headlong  into  the  river 
below,  in  order  not  to  show  herself  to  her  husband,  in  order  to  escape 
from  consciousness  of  her  miserable  existence  afterpassing  the  terrible 
nights  that  she  has  experienced  on  the  etape"  ^ 

"  A  peasant  woman  named  Avdotya  was  sent  in  the  same  way,  by 
etape,  through  the  prison  of  Yelets  to  her  native  village  of  Berezovki 
(Kozinski  district).  One  day  she  was  found  hanging  from  a  piece  of 
ribbon  behind  the  door  in  the  cell  of  the  Serghievsk  volost  board 
(Yelets  district).  The  guard  on  duty,  wh©  a  few  moments  previous 
was  chatting  with  her,  while  he  was  lighting  the  stove,  had  only  gone 
for  a  moment  to  another  room  and,  returning  almost  immediately,  found 
her  hanging.  Instead  of  cutting  her  down  at  once  and  giving  her  assist- 
ance, he  ran  off,  terrified  at  the  sense  of  his  responsibility,  to  fetch  a  vil- 

1  Cf.  Law  Messenger,  No.  ii.,  p.  337. 


134  RUSSIAN    TRAITS   AND   TERROkS. 

lage  policeman  and  then  to  inform  the  hospital  doctor.  By  the  time 
medical  helji  came  it  was  fruitless.  The  motive  for  the  suicide  was  the 
following  :  — Towards  the  end  of  August  the  deceased,  along  with  several 
inhabitants  of  her  own  village,  set  out  on  a  pilgrimage  to  Voronesh  — 
a  distance  of  sixty  to  seventy  versts.  On  arriving  they  all  repaired  to 
the  monastery,  except  Avdotya,  who,  lingering  in  the  rear,  got  sepa- 
rated from  her  companions,  who  had  her  passport  for  safe  keeping.  Not 
possessing  this  important  dt)cument,  although  it  was  in  the  hands  of 
her  friends,  who  were  only  a  few  miles  off,  she  was  taken  up  and  put  in 
prison,  and  sent  home  by  etape.  At  last  the  wretched  woman,  having 
marched  from  prison  to  prison  for  about  a  month,  reached  Serghievsk 
(distant  only  from  sixty  to  seventy  versts)  with  unmistakable  indica- 
tions of  unsound  mind."  ^ 

"In  the  autumn  .of  1882,  in  the  city  of  Astrakhan,  the  police 
arrested  three  workmen  on  the  landing-place  because  they  had  not 
their  passports  on  their  persons.  They  were  all  three  of  them  Russian 
peasants  from  the  district  of  Laisheff.  One  of  them  had  been  ill,  and 
had  thus  allowed  the  term  for  renewing  his  passport  to  expire;  the  two 
others  had  done  their  duty  by  sending  the  old  one  to  the  volost  board 
in  due  time  for  renewal,  inclosing  the  legal  taxes  and  fees.  These 
assertions  of  theirs  were  not,  and  in  such  cases  never  are,  believed  (nor 
verified).  They  were  sent  hj elape  to  Tsaritsin,  where  they  were  kept 
in  prison  one  whole  month,  waiting  for  the  formation  of  a  convict 
gang,  of  which,  when  organized,  they  were  sent  to  form  part.  The 
gang  was  detained  at  so  many  junction  roads.on  the  way,  that  they  did 
not  get  to  Moscow  till  January,  1883.  Here  they  were  confined  for 
several  months,  till  a  Siberian  party  was  organized,  and  with  whom 
they  were  sent  to  Nischny  Novgorod.  In  this  city  the  breaking  up  of 
the  roads  in  spring  kept  them  and  their  convict  gang  back  for  a  con- 
siderable time,  and  it  was  only  in  May  that  they  reached  Kazan,  where 
they  were  again  confined  in  the  forwarding  prison :  after  which  they 
were  sent  on  to  Laisheff,  and  thence  to  their  native  volost.  When 
they  arrived  there  the  pissar  told  them  that  their  passports  had  been 
already  sent  to  Astrakhan  for  them,  and  that  he  would  give  them  no 
others.  So  they  had  no  option  but  to  wait  here  till  their  passports 
came  back  from  Astrakhan,  and  it  was  only  in  June,  1883,  that  they 
were  free  to  return  to  Astrakhan,  where  they  found  themselves  exactly 
at  the  starting-point  where  they,  had  been  nine  months  previously."  ^ 

These  men  had  been  robbed  by  the  convicts  with  whom 
they  were  forcibly  associated ;  an  unnamable  crime  had 
been  committed  upon  one  of  them,  a  yovmg  fellow  of  seven- 
teen. They  complained  to  the  authorities,  but  they  might 
as  well  have  poured  forth  their  complaints  to  the  icy  wind 
that  blows  from  the  Arctic  Ocean.  "I  saw  these  men," 
says  our  authority  of  the  La7v  Messenger,  "  when  they  were 
on  their  way  from  the  Kazan  forwarding  prison  to  Laisheff; 
they  were  mere  shadows  of  human  beings."^ 


1  Cf.  La70  Messenger,  No.  ii.,  p.  337.  ^  Ibid. 

3  Law  Messenger,  No.  ii.,  p.  338. 


RUSSIAN  prisons:  the  simple  truth.       135 

Another  class  of  innocent  men  who  have  to  pass  through 
this  infernal  ordeal  are  the  unfortunate  soldiers  who,  being 
sent  from  one  place  to  another  for  service,  or  returning 
home  when  it  is  over,  are  forced  to  herd  together  with  con- 
vict gangs  and  march  on  by  etape.  And  lastly,  any  one, 
whether  he  have  his  passport  or  not,  may,  if  any  member 
or  members  of  the  police  like  to  make  him  feel  what  they 
can  do,  be  sent  to  his  native  place  in  order  to  verify  his 
identity.  The  following  instance  will  leave  no  doubt  as  to 
what  is  meant  by  this  curious  operation,  and  as  the  names 
and  places  are  given,  it  may  serve  as  a  test  case  :  — 

"A  priest's  son,  Hyppolit  Krassotsky  by  name,  educated  in  the 
Ecclesiastical  Seminary  of  Nischny  Novgorod,  had  taken  ,up  his  per- 
manent residence  in  the  government  of  Ufa,  where  he  served  at  first 
in  an  oftke  under  the  crown,  and  afterwards  became  a  clerk  and  mana- 
ger on  the  estates  of  Colonel  Paschkoff,  and  the  former  minister  of  the 
interior.  General  Timashoff  (both  these  gentlemen  are  still  alive;  the 
former  is  said  to  be  now  living  in  London).  After  this  he  was  ap- 
pointed secretary  of  the  District  Court  of  the  Justices  of  the  Peace,  and 
was  confirmed  in  this  post  by  the  Governor  of  Ufa.  Every  one  in  the 
entire  government  of  tJfa  knew  him  perfectly  well.  And  yet  the  police 
Ispravnik  in  1S80  conceived  the  plan  of  verifying  the  identity  of  this 
man.  M.  Krassotsky  Handed  in  his  passport,  his  photograph,  the 
affidavits  of  many  persons  and  institutions  who  knew  him  both  in  the 
government  of  Ufa  and  in  Nischny  Novgorod.  But  the  Ispravnik  de- 
clared it  desirable  to  apply  to  him  a  measure  at  that  time  temporary, 
but  now  the  law  of  the  land,  namely,  to  send  him  by  etape  to  his  native 
place,  in  order  to  verify  his  identity.  Krassotsky  was  arrested  and  the 
day  was  fixed  for  his  deportation  to  join  the  ruffian  gang,  when  the 
governor  to  whom  numerous  and  energetic  representations  had  been 
made,  graciously  dispensed  him  from  going."  ^ 

"  1  know  of  nothing  more  helpless  and  hopeless  than  the  exist- 
ence of  these  unfortunate  persons  who  accompany  convict  gangs 
'not  in  the  guise  of  prisoners.'  I  know  of  nothing  more  horrible 
than  the  treatment  which  they  receive  at  the  hands  of  the  author- 
ities and  from  the  ringleaders  of  the  prisoners,  both  on  the  march  and 
in  the  prisons;  for  they  have  to  submit  to  imprisonment  on  their  way 
like  the  rest.  They  are  pariahs  among  the  offscourings  of  the  criminal 
world,  who  insult,  degrade,  rob  them,  and  do  them  all  manner  of  vio- 
lence. At  night  they  are  cast  out  of  the  plank  beds  and  forced  to 
sleep  under  them,  on  the  cold,  slushy,  or  frozen  ground.  The  old  men 
among  them  are  beaten,  the  old  women  scoffed  at  and  insulted,  the 
girls  and  boys  are  violated  and  abused  by  convicts  and  guards  alike."  2 

These  things  are  hard  facts,  which  need  no  commentary. 
They  cannot  be  denied  or  explained  away  and  no  pagans  sung 
to  Howard's  memory  at  the  Prison  Congress  should  cause 


1  M.  Krassotsky  is  still  living  in  Ufa. 

2  Law  Messenger,  No.  ii.,  p.  336. 


136  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

them  to  be  forgotten.  If  those  Enghsh  optimists  who 
eulogize  Russian  prisoners  are  aware  of  them  and  continue 
as  ecstatic  as  before,  the  matter  passes  naturally  from  the 
hands  of  the  logician  and  moralist  into  those  of  the  psy- 
chologist. 


RUSSIA  :    AN    ODE.  137 


RUSSIA:    AN    ODE. 

(Written  after  reading  E.  B.  Lanin's  account  of  "  Russian  Prisons.") 

I. 

Out  of  hell  a  word  comes  hissing,  dark  as  doom, 
Fierce  as  fire,  and  foul  as  plague-polluted  gloom ; 
Out  of  hell  wherein  the  sinless  damned  endure 
More  than  ever  sin  conceived  of  pains  impure  ; 
More  than  ever  ground  men's  living  souls  to  dust ; 
Worse  than  madness  ever  dreamed  of  murderous  lust. 
Since  the  world's  wail  first  went  up  from  lands  and 

seas 
Ears  have  heard  not,  tongues  have  told  not  things 

like  these. 
Dante,  led  by  love's  and  hate's  accordant  spell 
Down  the  deepest  and  the  loathliest  ways  of  hell, 
Where  beyond  the  brook  of  blood  the  rain  was  fire. 
Where  the  scalps  were  masked  with  dung  more  deep 

than  mire, 
Saw  not,  where  the  filth  was  foulest,  and  the  night 
Darkest,  depths  whose  fiends  could  match  the  Mus- 
covite. 
Set  beside  this  truth,  his  deadliest  vision  seems 
Pale  and  pure  and  painless  as  a  virgin's  dreams. 
Maidens  dead  beneath  the  clasping  lash,  and  wives 
Rent  with  deadlier  pangs   than   death  —  for   shame 

survives, 
Naked,    mad,    starved,    scourged,    spurned,    frozen, 
fallen,  deflowered, 


138  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

Souls  and  bodies  as  by  fangs  of  beasts  devoured, 
Sounds  that  hell  would  hear  not,  sights  no  thoughts 

could  shape, 
Limbs  that  feel  as  flame  the  ravenous  grasp  of  rape, 
Filth  of  raging  crime  and  shame  that  crime  enjoys, 
Age  made  one  with  youth  in  torture,  girls  with  boys, 
These,  and  worse,  if  aught  be  worse  than  these  things 

are, 
Prove  thee  regent,  Russia  —  praise  thy  mercy.  Tsar. 

11. 

Sons  of  man,  men  born  of  women,  may  we  dare 
Say  they  sin  who  dare  be  slain  and  dare  not  spare  ? 
They  who  take  their  lives  in  hand  and  smile  on  death, 
Holding  life  as  less  than  sleep's  most  fitful  breath. 
So  their  life  perchance  or  death  may  serve  and  speed 
Faith  and  hope,  that  die  if  dream  become  not  deed  ? 
Nought  is  death  and  nought  is  life  and  nought  is  fate 
Save  for  souls  that  love  has  clothed  with  fire  of  hate. 
These  behold  them,  weigh  them,  jjrove  them,  find 

them  nought. 
Save  by  light  of  hope  and  fire  of  burning  thought. 
What  though  sun  be  less  than   storm  where  these 

aspire, 
Dawn  than  lightning,  song  than  thunder,  light  than 

fire.? 
Help  is  none  in  heaven  :  hope  sees  no  gentler  star  : 
Earth  is  hell,  and  hell  bows  down  before  the  Tsar. 
All  its  monstrous,  murderous,  lecherous  births  acclaim 
Him  whose  empire  lives  to  match  its  fiery  fame. 
Nay,  perchance  at  sight  or  sense  of  deeds  here  done, 
Here  where  men  may  lift  up  eyes  to  greet  the  sun, 
Hell  recoils  heart-stricken  :  horror  worse  than  hell 


Russia:  an  ode.        ■  139 

Darkens  earth  and  sickens  heaven  ;  life  knows  the 

spell, 
Shudders,  quails,  and  sinks  —  or,  filled  with  fierier 

breath. 
Rises  red  in  arms  devised  of  darkling  death. 
Pity  mad  with  passion,  anguish  mad  with  shame, 
Call  aloud  on  justice  by  her  darker  name ; 
Love  grows  hate  for  love's  sake ;  life  takes  death  for 

guide. 
Night  hath  none  but  one  red  star  —  Tyrannicide. 

III. 

"  God  or  man,  be  swift ;  hope  sickens  with  delay  : 
Smite,  and  send  him  howling  down  his  father's  way ! 
Fall,  O  fire  of  heaven,  and  smite  as  fire  from  hell. 
Halls  wherein  men's  torturers,  crowned  and  cowering, 

dwell ! 
These  that  crouch  and  shrink  and  shudder,  girt  with 

power  — 
These  that  reign,  and  dare  not  trust  one  trembling 

hour  — 
These  omnipotent,  whom  terror  curbs  and  drives  — 
These  whose  life  reflects  in  fear  their  victims'  lives  — 
These  whose  breath  sheds  poison  worse  than  plague's 

thick  breath  — 
These  whose  reign  is  ruin,  these  whose  word  is  death. 
These  whose  will  turns  heaven  to  hell,  and  day  to 

night, 
These,  if  God's  hand  smite  not,  how  shall  man's  not 

smite.?" 
So  from  hearts  by  horror  withered  as  by  fire 
Surge  the  strains  of  unappeasable  desire  ; 
Sounds  that  bid  the  darkness  lighten,  lit  for  death ; 


140  RUSSIAN    TRAITS   AND   TERRORS. 

Bid  the  lips  whose  breath  was  doom  yield  up  their 

breath  ; 
Down  the  way  of  Tsars,  awhile  in  vain  deferred, 
Bid  the  Second  Alexander  light  the  Third. 
How  for  shame  shall  men  rebuke  them  .-*  how  may  we 
Blame,  whose  fathers  died,  and  slew,  to  leave  us  free  ? 
We,  though  all  the  world  cry  out  upon  them,  know. 
Were  our  strife  as  theirs,  we  could  not  strike  but  so  ; 
Could  not  cower,  and  could  not  kiss  the  hands  that 

smite ; 
Could  not  meet  them  armed  in  sunlit  battle's  light. 
Dark  as  fear  and  red  as  hate  though  morning  rise, 
Life  it  is  that  conquers  ;  death  it  is  that  dies. 

Algernon  Charles  Swinburne. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  I4I 


CHAPTER     VI. 

SEXUAL   MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA. 

The  most  didactically  moral  of  Russian  novelists  has  just 
succeeded  in  shocking  even  his  friends  by  completing  his  in- 
dictment of  the  civilized  world  in  the  Kreutzer  Sonata,  a 
work  of  almost  repulsive  pessimism. 

He  has,  it  is  argued,  taken  as  types  exceptional  instances 
of  sensual  barbarity,  and  founded  a  theory  of  humanity  on 
a  few  of  its  foulest  members.  Were  that  so,  there  would  be 
ground  for  complaint ;  but,  in  fact,  Count  Tolstoi  speaks  for 
the  halves  of  two  continents,  and  speaks  from  the  profound- 
est  knowledge  ;  for  though  he  sees  the  rest  of  the  world 
through  the  air  of  his  country,  he  scans  everything  within  it 
with  unflinching  and  unfailing  exactness. 

With  his  conclusions  we  have  nothing  to  do ;  but  for  the 
proportions  and  accuracy  of  his  premises  this  article,  which 
was  in  type  some  months  before  Lev  Nikolai'evitch  (Count 
Tolstoi)  read  his  tale  to  a  Russian  audience,  will  avouch ; 
and  if  not  always  with  sufficient  distinctness,  it  must  be  re- 
membered that  the  tenderness  of  English  vision  compels 
one  to  print  cautiously  from  so  dark  a  negative,  and, 
besides,  there  is  no  aspect  of  civilization  more  diificult  to 
discuss  and  analyze  from  an  ethical  point  of  view  than  that 
which  deals  with  the  relations  of  the  sexes  to  each  other ; 
the  delicate  handling  at  all  times  required  by  this  thorny 
subject  becoming  an  almost  impossible  tour  de  force  when 
it  is  a  question  of  depicting  a  state  of  things  for  which  the 
English  expressions  have  grown  somewhat  obsolete,  and  the 
English  imagination  has  become  too  rigid  and  unbending. 
For  the  most  accurate  judgment  upon  Russian  society  from 
this  point  of  view  would  be  Gibbon's  summary  sentence 
upon  that  of  Gaul  under  the  Merovingians  :  "  It  would  be 
difficult  to  find  anywhere  more  vice  or  less  virtue." 

At  first  sight  this  would  seem  to  run  counter  to  ordinary 
experience,  which  goes  to  show  that  chastity  and  the  kin- 
dred virtues  are  encouraged  and  fostered  by  the  atlverse 
conditions  inseparable  from  the  lower  forms  of  social  life, 


142  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

such  as  prevail  in  Russia ;  by  the  joyless  existence  of  men 
engaged  in  a  hard  and  precarious  struggle  for  bare  necessi- 
ties, rather  than  by  the  ease,  refinement,  and  comfort  of 
advanced  civilization.  But  the  contradiction  is  more  ap- 
parent than  real,  for  sexual  immorality  in  Russia  is  not  the 
outcome  of  the  same  psychological  process,  is  not  accom- 
panied by  the  same  misgivings,  succeeded  by  the  same 
pricks  of  remorse,  nor  socially  punished  with  the  same 
obloc^uy  and  ostracism  as  elsewhere.  It  is  one  of  the  ordi- 
nary incidents  of  an  unchequered  life,  like  marriage  or  the 
measles.  Whenever  the  force  of  evidence  compels  us  to 
abandon  this  explanation  and  seek  fCr  another,  we  can  safely 
have  recourse  to  the  probable  hypothesis  of  an  abnormal 
psychical  state — a  plea  to  which  many  intelligent  Russians 
proudly  lay  claim  as  to  a  sort  of  national  birthright.^ 

Instead  therefore  of  poring  over  the  pages  of  Congreve 
and  Wycherley,  as  Elia  was  wont  to  do  when  desirous  of  tak- 
ing an  airing  beyond  the  diocese  of  strict  conscience  and 
of  respiring  the  breath  of  imaginary  freedom,  one  need  only 
to  come  to  Russia.  In  both  worlds  one  essential  element 
of  morality  is  wanting,  namely,  consciousness  on  the  part  of 
the  actors  that  they  are  breaking  through  religious  restraints 
or  moral  laws. 

The  foreigner  who  visits  Russia  ignorant  of  the  language 
and  the  people,  as  are  most,  has  little  difficulty  in  gleaning 
data  enough  during  the  first  few  days  of  his  sojourn  to  en- 
able him  to  gauge  with  tolerable  accuracy  the  abyss  that 
separates  Russian  notions  of  morality  and  decency  from 
those  which  prevail  in  the  West.  He  has  only  to  glance  at 
that  ever-open  book,  the  street,  which  exerts  a  much  deeper 
and  more  abiding  influence  upon  the  education  of  the  popu- 
latiofis  of  towns  and  cities  than  pedagogues  or  morahsts  are 
given  to  believe.  "  It  is  the  street  that  infects,"  said  M. 
Zola  once,  speaking  of  his  own  country ;  "  vice  is  rampant 
in  the  streets,  and  is  there  seen  and  touched,  and  its  con- 
tact is  corruption."  However  true  this  may  be  of  French 
cities,  we  are  forced  to  admit  that  it  is  a  perfectly  accurate 


1  In  Russia,  where  obscure  and  imaginary  mental  ailments  are,  for  all 
legal  and  most  practical  purposes,  confounded  with  insanity  of  behavior, 
the  word  psychopath,  meaning  a  person  who  enjoys  all  the  rights  of  a  sane 
man  and  many  of  the  privileges  of  a  lunatic,  though  coined  but  a  few  years 
ago,  is  most  extensively  used  by  all  classes  of  society.  So  many  persons 
now  descrilje  themselves  ^.-i  psychopaths  that  it  no  longer  confers  upon  them 
the  least  distinction. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  I43 

description  of  Russian  streets,  which  reek  with  unnamable 
corruption  and  foulness. 

Vice  in  its  myriad  guises,  or  in  its  repulsive  nakedness, 
is  forever  before  the  wondering  eyes  of  children,  who 
wither  away  by  touching  it  as  from  the  poisonous  shade  of 
some  strange  upas-tree.  Sins  against  the  ten  command- 
ments, and  even  monstrous  crimes  specified  in  detail  by  the 
circumstantial  law  of  Leviticus,  are  oftentimes  committed  in 
the  squares,  the  parks,  the  streets,  and  even  in  the  shadow 
of  churches.  Should  the  eye  of  a  conscientious  policeman 
descry  the  abomination  he  considers  that  he  has  done  his 
duty  if  he  shouts  at  the  offenders  to  move  on,  accompanying 
his  censure  with  a  string  of  objurgatory  phrases  which  the 
most  reckless  of  French  realists  would  not  dare  to  cast  be- 
fore his  readers.  These  sights  touch  and  taint  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  young  :  excite  within  them  a  prurient  curiosity 
about  things  they  should  not  know,  and  make  them  fancy 
all  nature  as  depraved  as  man. 

It  would  be  exceedingly  misleading,  however,  to  gauge 
the  moral  standard  of  any  people  by  the  unbridled  debauch 
and  brutish  sensuality  that  prevail  in  populous  cities,  which 
in    the    purest    of   kingdoms   are    often    hotbeds    of   vice. 
Sodom   might    be  the  capital   of  a  modern    Arcadia,   and 
Babylon  the  metropolis  of  an  empire  with  the  chaste  Diana 
as  protectress  ;  the  frightful  excesses  focussed   together  in 
the  capitals  being  no   more   typical    of  the   manners   and 
morals  of  the  nation  as  a  whole  than  the  leper  settlement  of 
Molokai  is  a  trustworthy  exponent  of  the  health  of  the  bulk 
of  the  Sandwich  Islanders.     In  Russia  it  is  otherwise.     The 
specific  difference  between  that  and  other  countries  consists 
in  the  universality  of  the  phenomenon.     It  is  confined  to  no 
age  ;  restricted  to  no  class  ;  typical  of  no  profession.     It  is 
as  national  as  the  language  or  the  music,  and  characterizes 
the  peasant  and  the  merchant  to  the  full  as  completely  as 
the  members  of  the  aristocracy,  who  have  ever  been  a  law 
unto  themselves.     Nor  is  there  anything  very  surprising  in 
this.     The  upbringing  of  those  classes  which  are  subjected 
to  educational  processes  is,  in  truth,  as  little  conducive  as 
the  street  training  of  the  poor  to  those  conceptions  of  duty 
and  obligation,  to  that  practice  of  discipline  and  self-mastery 
which  alone  render  possible  a  high  standard  of  sexual  mo- 
rality.    It  is  conceived  in  the  same  narrow  spirit  without 
relation   to   family,  society,   country ;    consisting   mainly   of 
unconnected  scraps  of  doubtful  information  upon  a  very 


144  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

wide  range  of  topics  patched  together  without  any  intelU- 
gible  purpose.  That  careful  gentle  training  of  the  tender 
soul  in  the  practice  of  self-restraint,  love  of  truth  and  justice  : 
those  painful  prunings  and  clipi)ings  of  the  early  desires 
branching  forth  in  all  directions,  which  give  moral  strength 
and  elevation  ;  that  ennobling  of  the  affections  and  gradual 
widening  of  the  sympathies  of  youths  brought  up  as  befits 
the  heirs-apparent  of  the  accumulated  wealth  of  humanity, 
in  fine  all  that  loving  care,  those  wise  maxims,  and  the  still 
more  efficacious  preaching  of  example  which  modern  peda- 
gogues understand  by  education,  are  still  unknown  in  Russia. 
The  Russian  grammar-school  is  little  more  than  a  ma- 
chinery for  bringing  to  bear  upon  children,  in  smaller  doses 
perhaps  than  the  parish  schools,  the  influences  of  the  streets. 
A  lady,  who  has  devoted  the  greater  part  of  her  life  to  the 
work  of  education,  as  directress  of  a  girls'  gymnasy,  or 
grammar-school  of  the  Ministry  of  Public  Instruction,  lately 
published  a  book  on  female  education  in  Russia,  in  which 
she  deliberately  affirms  that  the  foul  atmosphere  of  the 
street  and  the  market-place  has  invaded  the  school-rooms 
of  young  ladies  ;  and  after  giving  proof  of  the  criminal  pre- 
cocity of  these  young  ladies  in  walks  which  in  this  country 
would  necessitate  their  immediate  removal  from  a  grammar- 
school  to  a  penitentiary,  she  tells  us  that  these  future  moth- 
ers oftentimes  spend  their  evenings  in  low  cafes  chanfants, 
where  "they  conduct  themselves  loosely  —  indecently."  * 

Now,  when  the  keystone  is  thus  unfitted  for  the  important 
part  it  has  to  play,  what  can  be  expected  of  the  other  stones 
destined  to  compose  the  broad  arch  of  morality?  Still,  in 
spite  of  the  force  of  such  evidence,  it  would  be  unfair  to  sug- 
gest that  this  is  the  uniform  character  of  all  such  establish- 
ments in  Russia,  or  that  the  effects  of  the  pernicious 
influence  to  which  girls  are  undoubtedly  exposed  are  invari- 
ably as  mischievous  as  they  might  be.  There  are  exceptions, 
providential  escapes,  miraculous  justifications  of  the  Russian 
avoss  (mayhap)  in  the  annals  of  education  as  well  as  in 
those  of  railway  disasters.  The  distance  between  potentiali- 
ties and  their  realization  is  considerable  even  in  the  sphere 
of  vice,  and  should  be  liberally  allowed  for  by  readers  dis- 
posed to  launch  into  generalization.  Some  of  the  best  and 
noblest  types  of  Russian  women — and  they  are  among  the 
noblest  and  most  charming  to  be  met  with  in  the  civilized 


1  Cf.  Grajchdanin,  14th  August,  1888, 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  I45 

world — have  passed  through  such  schools,  which  require  to 
he  removed  from  the  baneful  shadow  of  Government  inter- 
ference if  they  are  to  lose  those  characteristics  which  are* 
positively  pernicious  ;  although  it  would  require  much  more 
than  this  to  enable  them  to  satisfactorily  discharge  the  ob- 
jects for  which  they  exist  —  to  unfold  and  foster  the  noblest 
instincts  of  female  nature. 

With  what  criminal  neglect  must  not  the  education  of 
mere  boys  be  conducted  if  one  may  judge  by  the  demorali- 
zation introduced  into  that  of  tender  girls,  destined,  if 
poets  speak  truly,  to  twine  the  fragrant  roses  of  heaven 
round  the  prickly  thorns  of  human  life!  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  many  educational  establishments,  especially  Govern- 
ment boarding-schools,  were  a  few  years  ago  hotbeds  of 
the  most  disgusting  forms  of  vice,  many  of  whose  youthful 
inmates  could  have  learned  nothing  new  from  the  most 
corrupt  of  Eastern  debauchees.  Those  unnatural  relations 
which  Moses  visited  with  death,  are  not  rare  in  Govern- 
ment boarding-schools,  military,  naval,  and  other,  in  which 
the  children  of  the  highest  dignitaries  of  State  are  brought 
up.  It  is  right  to  say  that  individual  members  of  the  Gov- 
ernment have  lately  taken  measures  to  check  the  spread  of 
this  evil.  But  very  vigorous  efforts  must  still  be  made,  and 
a  considerable  time  must  yet  elapse  before  these  establish- 
ments become  completely  harmless  —  a  rather  curious  ideal 
for  educational  institutions.  In  1887  I  asked  an  official  of 
the  Ministry  of  Public  Instruction  whether  his  long  and 
varied  experience  tended  to  confirm  this  view  of  Russian 
boarding-schools.  He  replied  in  the  affirmative,  and  com- 
municated many  characteristic  facts  in  support  of  this 
opinion,  which  I  am  debarred  from  repeating  here.  As  he 
went  on  to  speak  with  the  warmth  and  emphasis  of  convic- 
tion, I  thought  it  safe  to  put  the  question,  "Where  are  your 
own  children  being  educated?  "  "In  these  very  establish- 
ments that  I  am  so  bitterly  inveighing  against,"  was  the 
smiling  answer.  My  features  assuming  the  expression  of 
interrogative  surprise,  he  went  on  to  explain:  "I  am  too 
much  attached  to  them  to  send  them  abroad;  my  means  are 
not  sufficient  to  allow  me  to  suitably  educate  them  at  home. 
I  have  therefore  no  alternative.  Fortunately  I  am  some- 
what of  a  P\atalist,  and  my  apprehensions  are  allayed  by 
the  reflection  that  children,  like  nurses  in  fever  hospitals, 
are  so  constituted  as  to  belie  the  forecast  of  science.  Some 
never  take  the  infection;  others  catch  it  mysteriously,  as 


146  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

if  it  were  sent  directly  by  some  invisible  Apollo.  Some, 
nay  many,  children  remain'  untainted  in  spite  of  constant 
bad  example;  in  others  vice  seems  inborn." 

Home  influence,  it  is  true,  can  always  be  utilized  as  a 
corrective,  and  may  frequently  act  as  an  antidote  against 
the  strong  poison  of  schools  and  streets  to  which  the  chil- 
dren are  so  continuously  exposed.  That  it  is  so  employed, 
at  times  with  almost  miraculous  results,  is  evident  to  those 
who  know  the  country.  But  not  nearly  often  enough. 
Fatalism,  reinforced  by  the  lessons  of  bitter  experience, 
has  stamped  into  current  belief  the  mischievous  idea  that 
private  enterprise  and  effort  in  any  cause  are  always  as 
superfluous  as  they  are  frequently  dangerous.  And  where 
more  hopeful  views  prevail  the  parents  are  often  utterly 
disqualified  to  have  hand  or  part  in  the  education  of  their 
children;  for  the  union  of  excellent  intentions  with  erro- 
neous ideas  is  as  baleful  as  deliberate  perversity.  I  knew 
a  widely  respected  Russian  gentleman  who  took  his  son  — 
a  boy  of  between  fifteen  and  sixteen  —  to  a  disorderly 
house,  introduced  him  to  the  inmates,  and  bade  him  return 
whenever  his  inclinations  prompted  him.  When  telling 
me,  in  his  son's  presence,  of  this  feat  of  moral  sanitation, 
as  he  thought  it,  he  seenied  to  regard  it  as  the  conscien- 
tious fulfilment  of  a  clearly  defined  duty,  not  perhaps 
calling  for  exceptional  praise,  but  still  a  proof  of  consider- 
able enlightenment.  My  disapproval,  expressed  in  no 
measured  terms,  elicited  from  my  host,  among  other  uncon- 
ventional remarks,  the  statement,  which  he  afterwards 
enabled  me  to  verify,  that  this  is  no  uncommon  practice 
in  the  country.  This  is  very  shocking,  no  doubt,  from  an 
Phiglish  point  of  view,  but  is  it  wrong,  judged  by  a  Russian 
standard?  "Quando  enim  hoc  factum  non  est?"  the 
Russians  may  truly  ask  with  Cicero,  "quando  reprehensum? 
Quando  non  permissum?  "  Why,  he  may  insist,  should  the 
considerations  of  time,  place,  traditions,  public  opinion, 
moral  ideals  that  render  these  views  and  practices  blameless 
in  Cicero,  Cato,  and  their  contemporaries,  lose  their  force 
when  applied  to  modern  Russians?  And  it  is  somewhat 
difficult  to  suggest  a  satisfactory  answer. 

"  No  one  interested  in  the  welfare  of  our  young  genera- 
tion—  and  who  that  loves  his  country  is  not  so  interested? 
—  can  look  without  a  feeling  of  profound  melancholy  upon 
its  appalling  moral  condition,"  exclaims  a  Russian  publi- 
cist.    "And,  worst  of  all,  it  is  impossible  to  foresee  the 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  1 4/ 

end  of  this  miserable  state  of  things  or  to  hope  for  a  speedy 
change  for  the  better."'  Who  is  it  to  come  from?  The 
parents?  The  family?  "It  is  certain,"  we  are  assured  by 
a  publicist  in  the  Noi'oye  Vremya,  "that  the  majority  of 
families  to  whom  higher  education  is  accessible  have  not 
the  dimmest  notion  what  education  is."^  Another  writer, 
who  treats  this  subject  in  a  Government  organ,  affirms  that 
those  families  in  which  the  children  are  morally  and  irreme- 
diably wrecked  by  the  criminal  conduct  of  the  parents  are  to 
be  counted  by  "  hundreds  of  thousands."  ^  There  is  very  little 
then  to  be  expected  from  home  influences.  We  have  seen 
the  tendency  of  the  schools.  It  only  remains  to  be  noted 
that  most  of  the  acts  of  the  Government  in  connection 
with  education,  whatever  their  real  objects,  have  tended  to 
demoralize  the  young  generation.  During  the  past  few 
years,  for  instance,  the  fe/scn/ie/  oi  most  of  the  gymnasies 
and  high  schools  has  been  changed  and  "weeded  "  of  men 
of  science  and  principle  who  were  suspected  of  harboring 
liberal  notions.  Their  places  have  been  taken  by  individuals 
who  endeavor  to  make  up  for  the  intellectual  and  moral 
qualities  of  their  predecessors  by  immoderate  zeal  for 
autocracy.  The  nature  of  the  influence  of  the  new  men 
upon  the  youths  confided  to  their  care  may  be  imagined 
from  the  value  they  set  upon  good  example.  The  following 
sketch  is  taken  from  a  Government  organ,  and  cannot 
therefore  be  suspected  of  exaggeration.  In  the  district  of 
Starobelsk, 

"  The  educators  of  youth  walk  about  in  broad  daylight  in  the  public 
places  with  their  mistresses  on  their  arms,  although  provided  with  law- 
ful wives.  And  this  in  presence  of  their  pupils.  IVe  are  nozvise  sur- 
prised (hat  society  should  look  with  friendly  eyes  upon  such  doings  ;  but  it 
is  surely  unseemly  that  the  director  of  the  Gyninasy  and  the  parents  of 
the  children  should  show  themselves  so  thoroughly  indifferent  to  the 
public  profligacy  of  the  trainers  of  their  children." 

In  this  way,  long  before  the  youth  is  sent  into  the  world  to 
fight  his  own  way,  his  soul  is  swept  and  garnished  by  parents 
and  pedagogues,  and  made  ready  for  the  reception  of  a 
legion  of  unclean  devils.  This  accounts  for  the  remarkable 
precocity  in  vice  characteristic  of  too  many  Russian  chil- 


1  Cf.  Graschdanin,  3rd  April,  1889. 

2  Novoye  Vremya,  22nd  September,  1889. 

8  Graschdanin,   3rd  April,  1889,  in    an  article  entitled    "The    Modern 
Family," 


148  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

dren,  to  which  no  European  country  supplies  a  parallel. 
Thus  criminal  liaisons  are  often  contracted  between  school 
children  at  an  age  when  German  boys  and  girls  are  still 
firm  believers  in  the  Klapperstorch  theory  of  the  perpetua- 
tion of  the  human  race,  and  l^nglish  youths  and  maidens 
too  much  absorbed  by  marbles,  tops,  dolls,  and  hoops,  to 
need  any  theories,  mythical  or  physiological,  on  the  ques- 
tion. When,  therefore,  we  read  of  the  trial  of  a  schoolboy 
of  sixteen  for  cleaving  another  child's  skull  "over  a  love 
affair,"  inflicting  wounds  which  the  physicians  described 
as  incurable,  we  are  no  more  surprised  at  the  origin  of  the 
assault  than  at  the  outcome  of  the  trial.  'Jhe  prisoner, 
having  heen  found  guilty  of  wounding  with  intent  to  inflict 
grievous  bodily  harm,  and  of  having  disabled  his  victim 
for  life,  the  court  thoughtfully  adjourned  the  case  for  a 
fortnight,  to  give  him  time  to  accept  or  reject  the  terms 
offered  by  the  prosecutor  —  a  full  pardon  and  legal  impunity 
in  consideration  of  a  payment  of  twenty-five  roubles  (about 

£2   lOS.).^ 

If,  as  an  English  philosopher  laid  it  down,  the  greatest 
of  faults  is  the  consciousness  of  none,  it  would  go  hard 
with  Russians,  who  are  seldom  troubled  with  misgivings. 

But  fortunately  for  them,  circumstances  which  would 
intensify  guilt  in  one  stage  of  social  progress  annihilate  it 
in  another;  and  what  is  gross  immorality  in  England  or  Ger- 
many would  be  mere  blameless  pleasure  in  Russia.  A  partial 
test  of  the  truth  of  this  thesis  is  afforded  by  whole  cate- 
gories of  acts  which  are  reprehensible  from  two  different 
ix)ints  of  view:  first,  as  clashing  with  certain  precepts  of 
honor  generally  recognized  in  other  countries,  and  also  as 
violating  the  indefeasible  rights  of  others.  In  Russia  these 
acts  derive  their  ethical  coloring  exclusively  from  that  one 
of  their  tendencies  by  which  the  rights  of  others  are  affected; 
and  whenever  the  axiom  volenti  non  fit  injuria  can  be  applied 
to  this  aspect,  all  more  delicate  criteria  are  brushed  aside, 
and  the  misdemeanor  becomes  a  perfectly  legitimate  trans- 
action. The  ceremony  of  public  betrothal,  for  instance, 
still  frequent  in  the  middle  and  lower  classes  of  Russian 
society,  is  clearly  understood  not  only  to  confer  certain 
rights  upon  the  bridegroom,  but  likewise  to  impose  upon 
him  certain  obligations,  mainly  of  a  negative  character,  in 
the  interests  not  merely  of  an  individual  but  also  of  society. 

1  Graschdanin,  i6th  September,  1889. 


SEXUAL    MORALITV    IN    KLlSSIA.  I49 

In  Russia  these  duties  are  frequently  shirked  with  the 
implied  consent  of  the  party  in  whose  sole  interest  they  are 
erroneously  held  to  be  imposed,  and  I  know  one  case  in 
which  the  consent  was  plainly  expressed;  the  bride  herself, 
the  daughter  of  a  wealthy  merchant,  being  solicitous  that 
her  future  husband  should  remain  absolutely  free  from  fetters 
until  the  marriage  ceremony  should  solemnly  d'eprive  him 
of  his  liberty.  In  such  cases  no  crime  is  perpetrated,  no 
sin  committed,  no  scandal  given. 

Although  it  would  be  too  much  to  maintain  that  these 
grotesque  conceptions  of  morality  are  the  direct  products 
of  serfdom,  it  cannot  be  gainsaid  that  it  did  much  to  per- 
petuate them.  And  is  still  doing  much.  P'or,  strange  as 
it  may  sound,  serfdom  in  many  of  its  most  repulsive  aspects 
is  not  dead  nor  dying.  In  what,  for  example,  is  the  con- 
dition of  a  young  woman  of  the  lower  classes  different  from, 
or  better  than,  that  of  a  serf  ?  When  she  takes  service  as 
field  laborer,  factory  hand,  chambermaid,  apprentice,  clerk, 
saleswoman,  she  is  a  mere  chattel  in  the  hands  of  her 
master,  .whose  pay  entitles  him  to  dispose  of  her  services 
—  her  virtue,  her  body,  and  her  soul  —  and  he  insists  upon 
the  terms  of  the  purchase  with  the  pertinacity  of  a  Shylock. 
Now,  as  in  the  days  of  serfdom,  the  price  put  upon  the 
virtue  of  these  white  slaves  by  their  masters  and  their  masters' 
sons  is  positively  prohibitive.  The  authenticated  cases 
that  might  be  brought  forward  in  support  of  this  assertion 
would  fill  a  volume.  Those  who  are  desirous  of  forming 
an  idea  of  the  vast  proportions  which  these  practices  have 
assumed,  of  the  impunity  of  those  who  are  responsible  for 
them,  and  of  the  helplessness  of  the  uncomplaining  victims, 
who  are  taught  to  regard  compliance  with  such  unscRii)U- 
lous  demands  as  included  in  the  list  of  services  paid  for  by, 
the  paltry  twelve  or  fourteen  shillings  monthly  wages,  should 
read  two  papers  of  Serghei  Atava  which  appeared  in  the 
S/.  Petersburg  Gazette  several  years  ago.' 

As  to  the  upper  classes,  the  so-called  "good  society,"  it 
should  be  judged,  not  byv^ny  of  the  received  standards  of 
morality,  but  by  the  maxims  of  La  Rochefoucauld  and  the 
apophthegms  of  Arsene  Houssaye.  In  no  other  country  are 
the  conversations  and  the  interests  and  the  aims  of  the  men 
and  women  of  gentle  blood,  high-sounding  titles,  large  for- 
tunes, and  little  brains  so  utterly  frivolous,  shallow,  soul- 

1  Cf.  Petersburg  Gazette,  22nd  and  23rd  December,  1888. 


150  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

less.     There  are  indeed  brilliant  exceptions — small  select 
salons  in  which  the  entire  aristocracy  of  talent  meets  and 
mixes  with  a  few  gifted  representatives  of  the  aristocracy  of 
blood;  gatherings,    admission   to   which    is  more   eagerly 
sought  than  the  ribbon  of  an  order.     But  these  exceptions 
scarcely  weigh  in  the  balance.     French  society  under  the 
Regency,  with  all  its  cynicism  and  blots  and  foulness,  pos- 
sessed certain  redeeming  traits  which  are  lacking  in  that  of 
St.   Petersburg  to-day.     The  pleasant  little   suppers,  those 
feasts  of  reason  and  merriment   at  which  human  passion 
seemed  to  become  etherealized,  the  idyllic  amusements,  bril- 
liant masquerades,  and  other  cxsthetic  aids  to  sin,  are  wholly 
w-anting  in  Muscovy,  which  has  no  fringe  of  intellectuality 
or  setting  of  elegant  refinement  to  impart  to  glaring  impro- 
prieties the  appearance  of  eccentricities  of  genius.     Com- 
pliments, small  talk,  and  scandal  constitute  the  daily  bread 
of  the  mind;  and  the  spiritual  nature  wastes  away  on  such 
unwholesome  nourishment.     The  gifts  of  God  and  of  man 
are  put  to  no  better  use  than  that  of  fuel  for  a  sorry  display 
of  drawing-room  fire-works  that  leave  but  smoke  and  ashes 
behind.      Intrigues,   underhand  negotiations,    treacherous 
plots,  are  also  engaged  in  at  times;  but  these  are  the  nobler 
efforts,  the  loftier  flights  of  men  and  women  whose  natural 
element    is   contented   stagnation.       These    people   never 
dream  of  the  glorious  potentialities  of  human  nature;  they 
have  no  fixed  standard  of  right  and  wrong;  the  furniture 
of  .their  souls  contains  nothing  answering  to   the  words 
duty,   sacrifice,    truth,    love;  they   breathe  an  atmosphere 
of  poisonous  conventionality  infinitely  removed  from  the 
natural.     "Spiritual  interests  do  not  exist  there,"  we  are 
told  by  a  Russian  journalist,  "nor  are  they  alluded  to  other- 
wise than  as  mental  aberrations."  ' 

I  once  interrogated  one  of  these  ladies  —  a  person  pure 
by  temperament,  richly  gifted  by  nature,  among  other 
things,  with  the  eye  and  talent  of  an  artist,  a  ravishing 
voice,  and  uncommonly  good  looks,  who,  when  she  per- 
ceived the  drift  of  my  questions,  fixed  her  liquid  eyes  upon 
me  and  said  laughingly,  "Those  aspirations,  ideals,  and 
aims  in  life  which  you  suggest,  I  have  never  set  before  my- 
self. To  the  people  with  whom  I  consort  they  mean  noth- 
ing. I  know  that  I  have,  or  rather  had,  talents;  but  why 
cultivate  them?     For  what  and  for  whom?     I  am  also  con- 


1  C\:  Novpye  Vremya,  22nd  September,  1889. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  I5I 

scious  at  times  of  a  yearning  for  other  and  better  things; 
but  I  suppress  it.  Why  encourage  selfish  dissatisfaction 
with  one's  lot?  "  The  ideal  of  such  persons,  if  indeed  they 
can  be  supposed  to  have  any,  is  to  raise  the  dignity  and  the 
comfort  of  being  to  a  degree  that  would  render  superfluous 
the  trouble  of  doing. 

That  the  Imperial  family  should  have  escaped  the  breath 
of  detraction  in  this  poisonous  atmosphere  is  as  remarkable 
as  it  is  gratifying  to  all  friends  of  Russia.  Hereditary 
authority  is  not  always  —  nor  often  —  consistent  with  intel- 
lectual superiority;  it  is  nowhere  so  much  in  need  of  it  as 
in  Russia.  It  is  edifying,  therefore,  to  behold  a  powerful 
monarch  sobered  by  the  heavy  responsibility  of  his  position, 
striving  in  the  order  of  grace  to  win  triumphs  denied  him 
in  the  order  of  nature,  especially  if  the  taslc  should  require 
unusual  force  of  character.  It  is  much  to  be  regretted  that 
his  Majesty  is  unable  to  breathe  some  of  his  own  salutary 
spirit  into  the  souls  of  his  servants.  Even  the  Court  which 
has  his  excellent  example  before  its  eyes  is  as  unlike  the 
Emperor  as  it  is  possible  to  conceive.  With  the  least  re- 
spectable Court  of  modern  times  it  would  compare  unfavor- 
ably. The  anecdotes  current  at  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow 
about  its  occasional  sallies  of  shamelessness  and  perverse 
folly  would  not  bear  repetition  in  an  English  review.  The 
stories,  which  without  being  current  in  either  of  the  capitals 
are  perfectly  authentic,  could  not  even  be  distinctly  hinted 
at.  It  is  an  Augean  stable  that  a  radical  revolution  might 
wash  clean,  but  not  any  ordinary  half  measures.  A  year  has 
not  yet  passed  away  since  one  of  the  fashionable  restau- 
rants of  St.  Petersburg  witnessed  coarse,  stormy,  disgraceful 
scenes  enacted  by  some  of  the  highest,  fairest,  and  most 
powerful  in  the  empire,  which  if  transferred  to  canvas  by 
a  realist  like  Verestchagin  would  seem  a  gross  caricature  of 
one  of  the  least  aesthetic  paintings  of  Adriaen  Brouwer. 

Anna  Karenina,^  Helen,"  Irene, ^  Natasha,-*  Katerina,'' 
are  some  of  the  types  one  most  frequently  meets  with  to- 
day. In  Russia  they  are  appreciated,  glorified,  imitated; 
in  this  country  they  might  be  silently  pitied,  and  would  be 


1  The  heroine  of  Count  Tolstoi's  novel  of  that  name. 

2  One  of  the  chief  female  characters  in  Count  Tolstoi's  War  and  Peace. 

3  The  heroine  oi  Smoke,  one  of  Turghenieff's  best  novels. 

■1  The  chief  actress  in  Dostoieffsky's  Humiliated  and  Insulted. 
5  The  heroine   of  Ostroffsky's  famous  play    The    Thunderstorm ,  which 
lately  proved  a.  fiasco  on  tlie  i-'rench  stage. 


152  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

inexorably  ostracized.     'Iheir  number  and  their  vogue,  how- 
ever, should  not  blind  us  to  the  existence  of  other  and  far 
nobler  types,  as  the  zealous  preacher  in  Vienna  was  blinded, 
who  once  said  in  holy- haste  that  the  chas.te  women  of  that 
gay  but   somewhat    dissipated    capital    could    be   readily 
removed  in  a  single  carriage,  were  the  city  about  to  be 
consumed  by  fire  from  heaven;  and,  when  called  upon  to 
make  good  this  sweeping  accusation,  was  constrained   to 
shield  himself  behind  the  unworthy  subterfuge  that  he  had 
not  specified  the  number  of  journeys  the  carriage  would 
have  to  make.     There  are  numbers  of  women  in  St.  Peters- 
burg and  Moscow,  in  Kieff  and  Kazan,  whom  religion,  edu- 
cation,  or  temperament  have   lifted  up  to   the   i)erpetual 
snow-line  of  purity,  and  who  would  have  shed  a  lustre  on 
Port  Royal   itself";    women  whom   Cornelia  and   Lucretia 
would  have  been  glad  to  know  and  might  have  called  their 
friends.     But  having  said  this  much,  it  must  be  admitted 
that,  compared  with  the  gay  choir  of  their  sinning  sisters, 
they  are  but  as  small  dust  in  the  balance.     The  (hime  du 
grand  motide  is  not  one  of  this  noble  order.     She  is  usually 
"followed  by  a  crowd  of  admirers  whose  number  is  never 
limited  by  usage  or  tradition,  and  seldom  by  fastidiousness. 
Young  ofiticers  of  the  cavalry  guards,  students  of  the  law 
school,  pages  of  the  Imperial  corps,  and  other  incipient 
Hercules    in   attractive    uniforms,    are  kept   for   years    in 
inglorious    servitude   by   these    Slavonic    Omphales.     The 
frankness,   the  absence  of  disguise  or  concealment,  what 
Englishmen  would  call  the  shamelessness  of  the  procedure, 
is  such  as  to  make  one  doubt  of  one's  own  principles  of 
right  conduct.     A  woman  whose  only  attraction,  like  that 
of  Mrs.  Pinchbeck,  is  modesty,  would  be  poor  indeed  among 
the  graces  of  that  brilliant  circle.     Every  one  knows,  for 
instance,  and  no  one  is  in  any  degree  scandalized  by  the 
knowledge,  that  Countess  X.  or  Princess  Z.,  who  is  married 
and  is  blessed  with  almost  as  many  children  as  Hecuba,  is 
adored  by  five  or  six  young  scions  of  noble  families,  and 
two  or  three  old  generals  or  former  ministers  with  one  foot 
in  the  grave  and  one  hand  in  the  Treasury,  who  have  no 
faith  in  Platonic  love,  all  claiming  a  place  in  her  affections, 
and  each  having  his  claim  allowed,   the  husband  looking 
philosophically  on,  mindful  of  society's  precept,  "Go  thou 
and  do  likewise."     Now  these  acts,  which  are  done  with  the 
unreflecting   impulsiveness  of  an  Undine  unconscious  of 
impropriety,  cannot   possibly  be    termed  crimes  or  sins. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  1 53 

"Sin,"  Jeremy  Taylor  assures  us,  "first  startles  a  man,  then 
becomes  easy,  then  delightful,  then  frequent,  then  con- 
firmed." It  would  take  some  extraordinary  and  as  yet 
uninvented  sin  to  startle  a  man  in  Russia;  and  as  for  the 
acts  we  are  discussing,  they  seem  there  as  natural  as  breath- 
ing—  and  almost  as  necessary. 

This  is  bad  enough.  Still  worse  is  their  application  as 
means  to  an  end,  whereby  they  derive  whatever  moral  color- 
ing they  are  held  to  possess  from  the  character  of  the  object 
in  view.  Thus  the  promotion  of  a  Russian  official,  seldom 
the  reward  of  merit  or  the  recognition  of  honest  effort,  is 
not  unfrequently  the  work  of  his  wife's  hands.  I  am  per- 
sonally acquainted  with  several  families  whose  relative  well- 
being  has  been  obtained  in  this  manner.  A  friend  of  mine, 
a  mild,  kind-hearted,  well-educated  man,  who  would  not 
knowingly  hurt  a  fly  or  hesitate  to  make  a  heavy  sacrifice 
to  save  or  help  his  sworn  enemy,  is  a  case  in  point.  His 
promotion,  which  took  place  a  few  years  ago,  was  the  goal 
for  which  his  young,  handsome,  easy-conscienced  wife  had 
been  eagerly  striving  for  two  years  before,  constantly  con- 
sorting with  two  profligate  officials,  through  whom  the 
nomination  was  at  last  made.  All  this  was  done  without 
my  friend's  countenance  or  connivance,  his  wife  being 
separated  from  him  until  the  matter  was  ended.  His  quali- 
fications for  the  post,  which  he  now  occupies,  are  about 
equal  to  those  of  a  Red  Indian  fresh  from  the  prairies  for 
that  of  a  Channel  pilot,  and  he  does  more  unintentional 
harm  than  a  thoroughly  dishonest  man  could  effect  of 
deliberate  purpose.  Another  notorious  case  in  point  is  that 
of  a  high  official  very  well  known  to  every  Russian  journal- 
ist and  author  from  Warsaw  to  Vladivostok,  from  Archangel 
to  Tiflis,  whose  wife  lives  openly  with  a  Cabinet  Minister, 
her  husband's  protector.  From  this  coign  of  vantage  she 
has  watched  for  years  over  her  husband's  material  interests 
to  considerable  purpose ;  and  it  is  greatly  to  be  regretted 
that  ttie  man  whose  official  duties  demand  a  degree  of  wis- 
dom, knowledge,  and  kindliness  far  superior  to  that  called, 
for  by  any  other  post  in  the  empire,  should  have  no  stronger 
point  of  resemblance  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  in  whom  all  three 
qualities  were  so  harmoniously  blended. 

Such  combinations  and  compromises,  in  which  love,  or 
any  sentiment  remotely  akin  to  it,  is  wholly  out  of  the 
question,  seem  common  or  trivial  enough  to  pass  practically 
unnoticed.     When  the  husband,  not  being  an  official,  has 


154  RUSSIAN    TRAITS   AND   TERRORS. 

neither  promotion  to  hope  for  nor  neglect  to  fear,  the  petty 
Zeus  is  constrained  to  have  recourse  to  the  golden  shower, 
and  the  problem  resolves  itself  into  a  question  of  hire  or 
purchase.  I  was  slightly  acquainted  with  a  Russian  noble, 
M.  G.,  who,  having  convinced  himself  that  arertain  married 
lady  was  essential  to  his  happiness,  had  little  difficulty  in 
persuading  her  husband  to  ce^ie  her  to  him,  as  Cato  ceded 
his  wife  to  his  friend  Hortensius.  The  yearly  payment  of 
1,200  roubles  in  advance  constituted  the  business  part  of 
the  transaction.  And  this  satisfactory  arrangement  lasted 
without  a  break  down  to  G. 's  sudden  death  a  few  years  ago, 
when  this  dutiful  lady  returned  to  the  arms  of  her  husband. 
What  struck  me  as  the  strangest  aspect  of  this  strange  drama 
was  the  circumstance,  established  beyond  reasonable  doubt, 
that  this  married  couple  loved,  or  rather  liked,  each  other 
with  all  the  ardor  of  which  their  imperfect  natures  were 
capable.  Were  these  odd  methods  of  correcting  the  errors 
of  inexperience  or  the  neglect  of  fortune  of  rare  occurrence 
they  would  still  deserve  to  be  mentioned  as  characteristics 
of  those  original  beings  who  show  their  faith  in  their 
efficacy  by  employing  them.  It  is  safer  to  rest  their  fre- 
quency upon  the  testimony  of  the  Press  than  to  endeavor  to 
prove  it  by  heaping  Pelion  u]X)n  Ossa  in  the  way  of  exam- 
ples. "Do  they  love  each  other,  this  husband  and  wife?" 
asks  »ne  journal  which  has  devoted  some  serious  articles 
to  the  subject;  "yes,  they  love  and  esteem  each  other  as 
far  as  such  sentiments  can  take  a  hold  upon  people  who  are 
free  from  the  fetters  of  religion,  the  rules  of  honor,  and 
such-like  prejudices.  At  all  events,  they  tenaciously  cling 
to  each  other  and  stand  back  to  back  till  the  end.  For 
the  sake  of  attaining  their  common  objects  it  happens  that 
both  husband  and  wife  are  guilty  of  conjugal  infidelity; 
this  guilt  they  incur  without  a  inome7if  s  hesitation,  but  with 
such  cool  calculation,  such  well-poised  sagacity  as  dispel 
all  fears  as  to  the  toughness  of  their  matrimonial  alliance: 
the  task  performed,  he  will  return  to  her  and  she  will  hasten 
back  to  him;  and,  foreseeing  this,  they  both  feel  quite 
easy  in  mind."^  A  case  of  purchase  once  came  under  'my 
notice  which  attracted  considerable  attention  at  the  time, 
owing  to  the  position  of  the  parties,  with  all  of  whom  I  was 
well  acquainted.  The  husband  ceded  his  rights  for  a  lump 
sum  to  a  gentleman  of  noble  family  who  occupied  a  high 

1  Novosti,  i6th  March,  1889. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  I  55 

administrative  post.  As  soon  as  the  legal  difficulties  were 
smoothed  down,  the  lady,  whose  liberty  was  thus  purchased, 
had  her  union  with  her  new  knight  solemnized  with  all  the 
formalities  of  the  law,  and  all  the  rites  of  the  Church. 
Another  lady,  whose  acquaintance  I  made  in  the  salon 
of  a  grande  dame,  was  allowed  by  her  husband  —  a  most 
honest,  benevolent,  inconsistent  gentleman,  well  known  in 
official  spheres  —  to  spend  a  Twelvemonth  abroad  with  her 
lover,  in  his  house,  and  at  his  expense.  If  coldness, 
indifference,  or  positive  dislike  had  killed  this  gentleman's 
marital  affection,  his  conduct  would  be  intelligible  without 
ceasing  to  be  inexcusable,  but  I  know  that  he  idolizes  his 
wife,  that  she  in  her  own  way  is  fond  of  him,  and  that  the 
mystery  is  insoluble. 

If  irregular  relations  springing  from  mercenary  calcula- 
tions are  not  treated  even  as  peccadilloes,  it  is  not  surpris- 
ing that  those  that  are  founded  upon  mutual,  or  even 
one-sided,  attachment  should  be  invested  with  the  aureole 
of  virtue.  A  married  lady,  for  instance,  sets  her  heart 
upon  a  cold,  selfish  libertine,  a  Mr.  Horner  after  Wycher- 
ley's  own  heart,  and  her  whole  duty  forthwith  consists  in 
forgetting  the  claims  of  husband,  home,  children,  and 
following  her  lover  as  a  dog  follows  his  master,  in  spite  of 
his  subsequent  coldness  and  her  disenchantment.  It  is  not 
in  Russia  that  Riccordi's  young  bride,  meeting  her  Ferdi- 
nand on  her  wedding  morn,  would  have  left  it  open  to  the 
poet  to  impute  to  her  the  "unlit  lamp."  I  know  a  lady 
who,  meeting  a  gallant  three  weeks  after  her  marriage  and 
three  years  after  his,  separated  from  her  young  husband  as 
speedily  and  as  resolutely  as  if  in  obedience  to  a  religious 
vocation,  and  spent  two  years  in  the  house  and  family  of  her 
elected  affinity,  after  which  she  returned  to  her  husband, 
with  whom  she  is  at  this  moment  living  happily,  esteemed 
by  a  large  circle  of  friends. 

Religion  suggests  no  scruples  to  the  minds  of  these 
apostles  of  free  love,  public. opinion  begets  no  shame;  for 
"honor  and  duty,"  as  Horner  says  in  the  Country  Wife, 
"only  depend  upon  the  opinion  of  others,"  and  neither 
priest  nor  neighbor  thinks  less  highly  of  them,  for  making 
thus  light  of  plighted  troth,  than  those  whose  rights  are 
most  cruelly  violated  thereby.  The  entire  category  of  such 
acts  is  put  outside  the  pale  of  morality,  neutralized,  so  to 
say,  and  deprived  of  all  influence  on  the  career  of  individ- 
uals, public  or  private.      Qiiidquid  libet  licet  is  the  univer- 


156  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

sally  recognized  maxim  in  such  matters.  A  man  who  covets 
and  takes  his  neighbor's  wife  is  trusted,  esteemed,  and 
loved  as  if  he  had  remained  faithful  to  his  own,  and  he  can 
have  that  erring  lady  received  by  his  friends  with  the  con- 
sideration due  to  his  lawful  wife,  unless  there  are  some  very 
unusual  circumstances  to  justify  exceptional  treatment. 
The  wife  of  a  celebrated  Publicist  is  received,  I  am  cred- 
iblv  informed,  at  all  the  houses  at  which  her  lover  visits, 
although  she  is  separated  from  the  former  and  has  a  family 
by  the  latter. 

"  People  look  lightly  upon  marriage,"  says  a  Government  organ 
which  has  ways  and  means  of  obtaining  statistics  inaccessible  to  other 
journals,  "  as  an  alliance  entailing  no  obligation  whatever.  .  .  It  costs 
them  nothing  to  abandon  each  other;  in  fact  this  is  so  often  the  upshot 
of  the  union  that  it  is  practically  the  established  custom.  Whitherso- 
ever you  turn,  you  meet  with  such  shipwrecked  families,  the  husband 
going  one  way,  the  wife  goiiig  another.  Their  position  in  society  is 
not  one  jot  the  worse  on  this  account;  no  one  dreams  of  censuring 
their  conduct.  On  the  contrary  it  is  held  to  be  perfectly  natural  and 
justifiable :  their  characters  forsooth  are  not  in  harmony.  Sometimes 
they  live  ten  years  in  peace  and  friendship,  and  suddenly  in  the  eleventh 
it  is  revealed  to  them  that  they  were  not  created  for  each  other  and 
straightway  they  separate.  Nor  is  it  a  rare  occurrence  for  them  to  part 
the  day  after  the  wedding,  just  as  though  they  could  not  have  learned 
to  know  each  other  a  little  better  on  the  eve  of  the  marriage."  1 

Whether  love  is  the  word  that  best  describes  the  short- 
lived affection,  holy  or  unholy,  of  the  impulsive  Russian, 
depends  entirely  on  the  definition  one  accepts  of  this 
sentiment  or  passion.  In  the  extreme  north  of  Europe  it 
is  oftener  a  sentiment  than  a  passion,  and  more  frequently 
an  appetite  than  a  sentiment.  The  ancients  relate  that  in 
the  beginning  men  were  created  with  four  legs  and  four 
arms,  as  self-sufificing  as  the  late  Laurence  Oliphant  would 
have  wished  to  see  their  degenerate  successors.  The 
original  sin  of  pride,  however,  caused  them  to  be  split  into 
halves,  an  arrangement  which  opened  the  door  to  sexual 
love  and  all  the  evils  that  come  in  its  train.  It  was  of 
these  halcyon  days  of  humanity  that  the  two  lovers  were 
thinking  who,  asked  by  Vulcan  to  express  the  wish  nearest 
their  hearts  with  the  certitude  of  seeing  it  fulfilled,  replied: 
"  Fuse  us  in  thy  fire,  divine  Artificer,  and  make  us  two  but 
one."  Now  no  Russian  lovers  in  like  circumstances  would 
have  preferred  such  a  strange  request;  if  they  could  brook 


1  Graschdanin,  3rd  April,  1889. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  1 57, 

divine  interference  at  all  in  such  matters,  it  would  be  to 
request  a  miracle  in  the  very  opposite'  direction,  for  love 
to  the  Russian,  whether  holy  or  unblest,  is  a  law  of  man's 
nature  which  it  would  be  as  vain  to  kick  against  as  to  rise 
up  against  the  law  of  gravitation. 

The  common  people  differ  in  no  material  respect  from 
their  betters.  The  essential  points  are  identical  in  both, 
the  varnish  alone  is  lacking  in  the  former.  Nor  could  it 
well  be  otherwise,  for  no  Ezekiel  has  ever  yet  prophesied 
to  the  dry  bones  of  Christianity  that  were  carried  across 
the  Black  Sea  in  the  tenth  century  from  effete  Byzance,  and 
have  ever  since  been  slowly  mouldering  away  in  youthful 
.Russia;  and  as  there  has  been  no  moral  or  religious  force 
to  check  the  brutal  coarseness  or  soften  the  savage  rudeness 
of  the  Middle  iVges,  a  description  of  the  state  of  society  of 
any  epoch  of  Russian  history  will  read  as  if  drawn  up  in 
the  present.  One  of  the  most  accurate  and  trustworthy 
historians  of  his  own  times,  Kotoshikhin,  who  has  left  us  a 
description  of  the  institutions  rather  than  the  people  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  describes  his  countrymen  as  coarse 
and  ignorant,  and  generally  sunk  below  the  freezing  point 
of  civilization.  Schtschapoff,  one  of  the  most  impartial  and 
philosophical  of  Russian  historians,  gives  "  coarse  unbridled 
license  in  moral  life  and  gross  lewdness  and  slothfulness," 
as  the  chief  characteristics  of  the  Russian  people  of  the 
seventeenth  century;^  " carried  away  by  the  torrent  of  his 
carnal  passions,  the  common  Russian  man,  restrained 
neither  by  shame  nor  by  any  moral  law,  gave  his  coarse  mate- 
rial nature  full  sway,  stopping  short  at  nothing."^  The 
Patriarch  Philaret  described  his  countrymen  in  a  letter  to 
Archbishop  Cyprian  as  follows:  ''Many  Russians  ,  .  . 
seize  upon  and  take  to  themselves  as  wives  their  own  sis- 
ters, and  their  cousins,  while  others  commit  incest  with 
their  own  mothers  and  daughters  and  marry  their  mothers 
and  their  sisters."^  All  that  happened  many  genera- 
tions ago,  but  what  takes  place  at  the  present  day  is 
quite  as  deplorable.  "It  would  be  difficult,"  writes  a 
parish  priest,  "for  Russians  to  become  more  immoral 
than  they  actually  are.  Children  of  thirteen  stay  away 
from    home    by   night,    spending    their    time    in   haunts 


1  Russian  Rasskol,  p.  177. 

2  Russian  Rasskol,  p.  178. 

3  Collection  of  State  Papers,  part  iii.  No.  60.     Cf.  also  Schtschapoff,  I.  c. 
p.  1 80. 


J  58  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

of  unbridled  profligacy.  .  .  .  When  they  marry  they  sepa- 
rate, after  the  first  few  days,  for  a  year  or  more  —  often 
for  ever.  .  .  .  All  their  social  relations  are  permeated 
by  coarse,  cruel,  brutal  egoism.  The  husband  robs  his 
wife,  the  wife  her  husband,  children  their  parents.  .  .  . 
On  holidays  Russians  are  transformed  into  wild  beasts,  and 
even  on  working  days  they  are  unfitted  for  any  social  organ- 
ization.'" "The  district  courts,"  we  are  told  by  M. 
Pachmann,  "do  not  look  upon  adultery  as  a  serious  viola- 
tion of  conjugal  rights."-  "Such  is  the  coarseness  of 
manners,"  we  are  informed  by  a  writer  who  has  assiduously 
studied  the  conditions  of  this  intricate  and  forbidding 
subject,  "such  is  the  coarseness  of  manners  that  frightful 
types  of  men  are  coming  into  being  —  men  whose  presence 
in  a  civilized  community  cannot  possibly  be  tolerated."^ 
But  what  more  convincing  ])roof  of  the  stationariness  of 
social  life  needs  be  offered  than  the  marriage  customs  that 
still  obtain  in  Southern  Russia?  To  mention  but  one:  It 
is  well  known  to  all  who  have  sojourned  in  that  part  of  the 
empire  that  when  the  rich  symbolism  and  picturesque 
ceremonies  with  which  the  humblest  wedding  is  celebrated, 
have  been  duly  performed  and  the  revelry  is  coming  to  a 
close,  a  number  of  the  guests  invariably  assemble  in  a  body 
outside  the  bridal  chamber,  often  under  the  window  in  the 
street,  howling  and  shouting,  using  most  obscene  expres- 
sions, and  making  disgusting  demands  which  are  literally 
complied  with. 

The  Arcadian  simplicity  of  manners  which  one  is  wont 
to  associate  with  rural  life  in  Old  and  New  England  is  not 
one  of  the  characteristics  of  the  Russian  peasantry,  who 
rather  resemble  those  pinched,  crabbed,  old-fashioned 
human  mites  who  have  never  known  the  delightful  thought- 
lessness of  childhood,  have  never  dwelt  in  the  paradise  of 
youth  and  innocence,  but  seem  to  have  been  born  into  this 
life  before  sleeping  off  the  ills  and  cares  of  a  previous  miser- 
able existence.  Like  Ibsen's  Oswald  Alving,  they  are  the 
ghosts  of  their  sinning  fathers  born  to  expiate  terrible  sins. 
What  to  them  are  the  barriers  between  the  lawful  and  the 
unlawful,  the  proprieties,  the  amenities  of  civilized  life? 
The  social  position  of  woman  is  admittedly  the  keynote  of 


1  Grasckdanhi,  12th  August,  1889. 

2  Cf.  Book  about  Women,  p.  59. 

3  Cf.  Northern  Messenger,  January,  1889,  No.  i,  p.  54. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  159   < 

a  nation's  civilization,  and  all  the  parts  that  a  woman  plays 
all  the  world  over  are  recapitulated  in  Russia,  where  she  is 
an  article  of  luxury,  an  instrument  of  pleasure,  as  in  the 
harems  of  the  Mohammedan  East,  a  beast  of  burden  as 
among  most  savage  tribes,  and  a  friend  and  companion  as 
in  New  England.  The  great  bulk  of  Russian  women  now 
as  in  the  eleventh  century  are  drudges  first  and  mere  females 
afterwards.^  The  Ustav  of  Yarosslav  the  Great  puts  women 
upon  a  level  with  the  blind,  the  lame,  the  mendicant  poor, 
the  crippled,  and  deformed  humanity.  The  Orthodox 
Church  has  shown  itself  to  be  as  great  a  misogynist  as  the 
Koran.  You  could  almost  count  on  the  fingers  of  one 
hand  -  the  women  whom  it  has  admitted  to  the  rank  of 
saints. 

The  views  thus  authoritatively  put  forward  by  Church 
and  State  are  scrupulously  acted  upon  by  the  docile  people 
whose  proverbs  on  the  subject  are  at  least  terse  and  expres- 
sive. "A  hen  is  not  a  bird,  nor  is  a  woman  a  human 
being,"  is  a  doctrine  seldom  belied  in  practice.  Wife- 
beating  has  often  been  looked  upon  as  a  sign  of  genuine 
attachment,  though  in  Russian  proverbial  philosophy  it 
figures  mainly  as  a  condition  of  the  happiness  of  the  hus- 
band. "He  is  not  drunk  who  drinks  not  wine,  nor  is  he 
happy  who  beats  not  his  wife."  "Beat  your  wife  with  the 
butt  end  of  your  axe;  bend  down  over  her  and  smell  her, 
and  if  she  lives  and  imposes  upon  you  it's  a  sign  that  she 
wants  more."  There  need  be  no  fear  in  all  this  of  her 
powers  of  endurance,  for  a  "wife  is  not  a  pea  —  you  can- 
not crush  her,"  and  she  evidently  needs  to  be  constantly 
reminded  of  her  duties,  for  "A  girl's  memory  and  her  sense 
of  shame  last  only  to  the  threshold  of  the  door."  "  Woman," 
says  a  religious  manuscript  of  the  Rasskolniks  —  who  have 
preserved  the  habits,  manners,  and  views  of  the  sixteenth 
century  unchanged  —  "woman  is  the  weakest  creature,  the 
receptacle  of  all  woes,  the  red-hot  coal  of  dissensions,  the 
baneful  toy,  the  enemy  of  the  angels,  an  insatiable  animal, 
an  abyss  of  credulity,   a  bunch  of    obstinacy,    vanity   of 

1  An  honorable  exception  to  one  part  at  least  of  this  statement  should  be 
made  in  favor  of  Little  Russians,  whose  ecclesiastical  union  with  Rome 
and  political  relations  with  Poland  fostered  nobler  views  of  women.  At  the 
present  day  the  liberty  enjoyed  by  Little  Russian  women  is  one  of  the  char- 
acteristic traits  which  distinguish  Little  from  Great  Russians. 

2  I  think  the  exact  number  is  six,  the  chief  of  whom  possibly  deserves  a 
place  in  a  Russian  Walhalla,  but  has  assuredly  a  very  flimsy  claim  to  a 
throne  in  the  Christian  heaven. 


►  l6o  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

vanities,   an  attraction  in  the  distance,   an   angel    in   the 
street,    a   devil  at  home,   a  magpie  at  the  gate,  and  a  she 
goat  in  the  garden."     (jive  a  dog  a  bad  name  and  hang  it, 
is  a  true  saying;  and  barbarous  notions  of  women,  their 
nature  and  their  mission,  however  ludicrous  they  now  may 
seem  to  Fhiglish  readers,   have  been  and  still  continue  to 
be  productive  of  wide-reaching  effects  upon  the  social  con- 
dition of  the  Russian  people.     What  wonder  that  women 
brought  up  under  the  influence  of  such  demoralizing  maxims 
should,  when  they  find  field  work  or  domestic  service  too 
trying,  or  are  moved   by  the  vague  spirit  of  restlessness, 
deliberately  lead  a  life  of  immorality /?;-  the  sole  purpose  oj 
qualifying  for  the  wcllpaid position  of  wet-nurse  in  populous 
cities?     What  kind  of  wives  can  these  wretched  creatures 
prove,  with   their  highly-developed   animal   instincts  and 
imperviousness   to  all   sense  of  shame?'     The  answer  is 
writ  large  in  the  statistics  of  illegitimate  children,  in  the 
charge-sheets  of  assize  courts,  the  physical  degeneration  of 
the    people,  and  the  disintegration  of  society.     Here  are 
the    kind   of   advertisements,  for  instance,    that  one  reads 
in  the  Village  Messejiger,  a  newspaper  edited  for  peasants  by 
the  Ministry  of  the  Interior:  "We  respectfully  request  all 
persons  in  authority  to  seek  for  and  arrest  our  wives,  the 
peasant  women  Daria  Vyssotina  and  Agrippina  Tarassenkoff, 
who  went  away  from  us,  their  husbands,  on  the  23rd  inst. 
without    passports.       Description:   D.  Vyssotina,    eighteen 
years,    middle   sized,   light  hair,   brown  eyes,   clean  face. 
A.  Tarassenkoff,  nineteen  years,  of  medium  height,  light- 
haired,  clean  face,  enceinte.     Signed,"  etc. ^     How  can  one 
expect  the  young  girl's  sense  of  shame  to  last  beyond  the 
threshold  of  the  door,  or  even  so  far,  when  we  are  cognizant 
of    the    circumstances   that    in   districts   of    Russia   more 
extensive   than   the  United   Kingdom  it  is  customary  for 
married  men  and  women,  young  men  and  girls,  and  chil- 
dren of  both  sexes,  to  take  their  vapor  and  water  bath  all 
together  without  a  blush  or  a  scruple?'^     With  what  sacra- 
mental forms  or  pious  beliefs  can  the  sanctity  of  the  family 
be  hedged  round  in  a  country  where   polyandry  exists,  not 

1  It  is  the  virtues  of  these  well-meaning  but  miserable  beings  that  a  recent 
Knglish  traveller  in  Russia  exhorts  his  countrywomen  to  imitate.  That  sort 
of  praise  is  more  offensive  to  Russians,  who  wish  to  be  rather  than  to  seem, 
than  the  bitterest  sarcasm.  Wc  feel  like  the  soul  of  the  damned  smner  dur- 
ing the  fulsome  eulogium  delivered  over  his  tomb. 

-  Cf.  Is'ovoye  Vremya,  i6th  November,  1889. 

3  In  the  governments  of  Nischny  Novgorod,  Tamboff,  Baku,  for  instance. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  l6l 

the  polyandry  of  Thibet,  but  the  most  loathsome  form 
which  this  custom  is  capable  of  assuming  —  which  uproots 
all  respect  for  the  most  sacred  ties  of  nature.  In  the 
country  of  the  Dalai  Llama  the  joint  husbands  are  generally 
brothers;  in  Russia  they  are  frequently  father  and  son. 
This  practice,  confined  to  country  districts,  and  fortunately 
not  nearly  universal  even  there,  is  yet  widespread  enough 
to  have  received  a  technical  name  and  to  be  tegarded  as 
a  permanent  institution.^  Equally  strange  and  not  less 
demoralizing  is  the  custom,  prevalent  chiefly  in  Southern 
Russia,  of  allowing  two  young  people  who  feel  attracted 
towards  each  other  to  sleep  together  during  the  period  of 
courtship.  In  its  origin  this  usage  was  not  intended  to 
lead  to  gross  immorality,  and  stories  are  told  of  some  who 
availed  themselves  of  this  right,  which  remind  one  of 
the  continence  of  St.  Amnion  or  St.  Melania;  but 
mere  barren  intentions  are  powerless  to  modify  the 
play  of  cause  and  effect  in  this  rough  realistic  world, 
and.  one  has  no  difficulty  in  accepting  the  statement 
of  an  accurate  Russian  writer,  that  it  is  the  welcome  occasion 
of  systematic  debauch.  "We  may  possibly  affirm,"  says 
M.  Nekliudoff,  "that  if  the  law  were  to  punish  debauchery, 
concubinage,  and  adultery,  young  boys  would  have  to  offici- 
ate as  judges,  all  the  rest  ivould  be  prisoners ^  ^ 

I  had  intended  to  insert  here  some  evidence  of  the  moral 
condition  of  the  lower  orders  on  the  testimony  of  journals 
which  are  universally  read  in  Russia,  and  which,  judging 
from  the  reports  of  the  Divorce  Court  published  very  fully 
in  her  daiJy  papers,  I  thought  might  be  tolerated  in  Eng- 
land. I  am  told  that  is  not  so.  The  point,  however,  of 
most  consequence  is  not  the  frequency  and  barbarity  of 
acts  for  which  brutal  is  a  misnomer  and  a  libel  on  creatures 
with  natural  instincts,  but  the  callousness  with  which  they 
are  regarded,  and  the  price  at  which  they  are  assessed. 
Crimes  which  in  the  eyes  of  Western  law  can  only  be  atoned 
for  by  life-long  incarceration  are  treated  in  Russia  as 
peccadilloes  which  may  be  compounded  for  at  the  rate  of 
a  few  shillings  per  case.  We  have  it  on  the  authority  of  a 
lawyer  and  public  prosecutor  that  cases  of  criminal  assault 
are  very  rarely  brought  to  the  official  cognizance  of  the 


1  This  custom  partly  attributable  to  economic  causes,  is  called  stwkha' 
(sc/iestvo,  from  the  word  saokha,  meaning  daughter-in-law, 

2  Cf,  Book  al>ou(  VVomtn,  p.  57. 


1 62  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

administrators  of  the  law.     "They  are  all  settled  at  home, 
a  sum  of  money  being  paid  for  the  dishonor."  ^ 

To  persons  not  entirely  dead  to  all  feelings  of  humanity, 
who  can  realize  the  savage  brutality,  the  fiendish  cruelty, 
that  these  things  imply,  comparisons  between   Russia  and 
the  \Vest  would  be  superfluous.     They  could  add  nothing 
to  the  effect  produced  by  the  recital  of  the  bare  facts.    One 
is  only  astonished  at  the  forgetfulness  of  them  displayed 
by  the   Russian  Government,  \vhich  is  capable  of  being 
shocked  at  "Bulgarian  barbarities,"  horrified  at  Turkish 
excesses  in  Armenia,  and  fired  to  noble  eloquence  at  the 
thought  of  Russia's  civilizing  mission  in  all  these  coun- 
tries; and  yet  finds  no  more  urgent  measures  of  reform  to 
be  carried  out  at  home  than  the  closing  up  of  the  schools 
of  the  Zcmstvo  and  the  condemnation  of  the  people  to 
ignorance.      No  doubt  this  strange  interpretation  of   the 
duties  of  governors  is  the  result  of  conviction  —  not  of  a 
Satanic  plan  to  rule  by  demoralization.     The  conviction 
has   been  expressed  over   and   over   again;    recently,   for 
instance,  by  a  well-known  publicist  and  supporter  of  the. 
governmental  system,  who  in  a  book  which  has  just  reached 
a  second  edition  seriously  says,  "Whether  there  would  be 
any  advantage  to  the- peasants  from  education,  at  least  from 
a  moral  point  of  view,  is  extremely  problematical."^     This 
same  writer,  having  established  the  fact  that  the  number 
of  children  taught  to  read  and  write   in   Russia  is  very 
inconsiderable,  piously  exclaims,   "And  thanks  be  to  God 
for  this  same ! "     But  whether  the  cause  be  a  mistaken  sense 
of    duty  or  the  inexpiable  crime  of   killing   the   soul  in 
order  the  more  effectually  to  keep  the  body  enthralled,  the 
result  is  the  same. 

Immorality  never  ruins  a  man  in  Russia,  nor  even  dis- 
qualifies him  from  "honorably  serving  his  country,"  in 
whatever  capacity  he  may  thus  be  engaged.  I  once  met 
an  employee  in  Warsaw,  the  efficient  discharge  of  whose 
duties  implied  a  degree  of  honesty,  truthfulness,  and  noble- 
mindedness  by  no  means  common  in  more  advanced  coun- 
tries than  Russia.  His  "  friends  "  believed  him  to  be  either 
a  heartless  scoundrel  or  an  idiotic  egoist..  Although  he 
was  married  and  possessed  a  large  family,  no  one  was  at  all 
surprised  to  learn  one  day  that  he  was  being  sued  by  a  lady 


1  Cf.  Northern  Messenger,  1889,  No.  i.,  p.  51. 

«  Mo((ern  Hmsia,  and  edition,  St,  Petersburg,  1889, 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  163 

with  whom  he  had  lived  for  many  years,  and  by  whom  he 
had  a  numerous  offspring  whom  he  refused  any  longer  to 
support.  The  case  was  taken  before  several  courts  and  he 
was  finally  condemned  to  pay  a  monthly  sum  which  the 
Ministry  undertook  to  deduct  from  his  salary  and  make 
over  to  the  injured  lady.  A  few  weeks  later  another  lady 
took  proceedings  against  him  on  similar  grounds.  Then 
day  after  day  fair  ladies  with  pale  faces,  eyes  red  from  tears, 
and  cheeks  hollow  from  want,  would  come  to  the  Depart- 
ment, sometimes  with  their  children,  at  other  times  alone, 
and  ask  the  heads  of  the  Department  to  take  pity  on  them, 
and  compel  that  heartless  man  to  contribute  to  their 
support.  To  which  the  officials  made  answer  that  they 
must  appeal  to  the  courts,  and  that  in  any  case  more  than 
one-third  of  his  salary  could  not  legally  be  held  back  for 
the  use  of  his  creditors,  were  they  legion.  And  meanwhile 
this  Don  Juan  continued  regularly  to  perform  his  duties  in 
the  Ministry,  successfully  to  cater  for  his  pleasure,  and  com- 
fortably to  keep  himself  afloat  on  the  troubled  waters  of 
life;  and  he  is  still  "honorably  serving  his  country  "  at  the 
present  moment.  Another  official,  M.  Lebedenko  of  Vas- 
silkoff  (Government  of  Kieff),  seems  to  have  been  treated 
by  his  wife  as  the  wife  of  the  above-mentioned  gentleman 
was  treated  by  her  husband.  She  considered  her  marriage 
with  Lebedenko  an  error,  and  having  separated  from  him, 
she  made  repeated  efforts  to  repair  it.  After  some  years 
had  thus  elapsed,  last  year  Lebedenko  forwarded  a  formal 
petition  to  the  police  of  Odessa,  in  which  city  his  wife  was 
staying,  requesting  them  to  find  out  with  whom  she  had  been 
living  since  she  left  him,  and  to  compel  these  persons  to 
pay  him  the  sum  of  five  roubles  a  day,  or  at  all  events  to 
amicably  settle  with  him  the  money  question,  without  caus- 
ing it  to  be  brought  to  court.^  This  petition  has  been 
published  throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  Russia,  and 
Lebedenko's  practical  turn  of  mind  commented  upon, 
criticism  touching  all  the  extremes  of  opinion,  and  yet  he 
continues  to  discharge  his  duties  as  usual;  his  extraordin- 
ary readiness  to  turn  his  wife's  infidelity  into  a  source  of 
pecuniary  profit  not  having  unfavorably  impressed  his 
superiors,  who  seem  to  thoroughly  understand  and  sympa- 
thize with  human  nature  as  it  is  in  Holy  Russia. 

If  immorality  were  uniformly  taxed  in  Russia,  as  certain 

I  Cf,  V.  g.  the  Odessa  News,  21st  July,  i8§8, 


164  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

forms  of  it  actually  arc,  the  revenue  would  on  the  most 
moderate  calculations  immediately  be  doubled.  But  what 
no  government  could  possibly  attempt  has  long  since  been 
accomplished  by  private  enterprise,  and  it  would  be  diffi- 
cult to  point  out  any,  the  most  degrading,  aspect  of  vice 
that  is  not  already  transformed  into  a  hen  laying  golden  eggs 
for  some  trade  or  calling.  Thus  several  fashionable  restau- 
rants in  the  two  capitals  are  well  known  to  be  the  rendez- 
vous of  a  number  of  men  cursed  by  the  worst  vices  and 
unredeemed  by  the  graces  of  Oriental  civilizations.  And 
these  restaurants,  fitted  up  for  their  reception,  do  in  con- 
sequence a  very  i')rofitable  business,  'i'hen  there  is  not  a 
public  bath  in  all  Russia  which  is  not  a  thinly  disguised 
house  of  ill-fame,  intended  to  cleanse  the  body  and  begrime 
the  soul.  Again  there  is  a  shop  in  a  frecjuented  quarter 
of  St.  Petersburg  —  not  by  any  means  the  only  one  of  its 
kind,  I  am  assured  —  in  which  positively  no  business  is 
done  in  the  wares  exposed  for  sale  from  the  ist  January  to 
the  31st  December;  but  an  immense  trade  is  carried  on  in 
what  may  be  appropriately  termed  the  sale  of  souls  — 
white  slavery..  Taken  by  itself  this  fact  may  not  seem  very 
startling  or  exclusively  Russian,  nor  does  it. become  so  until 
we  take  into  account  the  notoriety  of  the  thing  combined 
with  its  perfect  impunity. 

In  the  comedy  called  The  Troglodyte,  printed  in  Moscow 
(1884),  and  lately  given  for  the  first  time  in  the  Abramoff 
Theatre  of  that  city,  one  of  \}t\Q  dramatis  per  so  nccw^xvcAy 
recommends  to  his  colleague  two  cocottcs  from  the  circus  of 
Herr  Soloman,  and  a  local  place  of  amusement  known  as 
the  Salon.  He  gives  the  detailed  addresses  of  these  mcm*- 
bers  of  the  frail  sisterhood,  the  hotels  at  which  they  are 
staying,  and  the  very  number  of  their  rooms. 

"At  first,"  says  the  Moscoza  Gazette,  commenting  on  this 
curious  style  of  advertising,  "we  refused  to  believe  our  ears 
when  we  heard  these  addresses  given  from  the  stage. 
What!  a  circus,  and  a  famous  circus  to  boot,  is  pointed 
out  as  an  asylum  for  such  persons !  This  is  tactless,  im- 
proper, impossible."' 

But  tke  force  of  these  and  similar  instances  lies  less  in 
their  immense  number  than  in  the  view  held  of  them  by 
the  Areopagus  of  the  people.  Who  takes  cognizance  of 
them  day  by  day  in  the  press,  in  the  courts,  in  the  bazaars 

1  Cf.  Novoyt  Vrcmya,  30th  October,  1889, 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    iK    RUSSIA.  165 

and  public  places?  Are  they  censured  as  crimes,  connived 
at  as  peccadilloes,  or  passed  over  as  indifferent  actions? 
This  is  really  the  all-important  question  for  the  moralist. 
For  there  is  always  an  immense  gulf  between  a  nation's 
ethical  ideal  and  its  every-day  performance;  with  corii- 
munities  as  with  individuals  it  is  always  a  case  of  exclaim- 
ing, 

"Video  meliora  proboque; 
Deteriora  sequor  "  ; 

but  in  an  age  of  progress  the  meliora  of  one  generation 
prove  the  deteriora  of  a  succeeding  one,  as  the  truths  of 
one  epoch  become  the  prejudices  of  the  next.  Enough 
has  already  been  said  to  show  that  to  sins  of  sexual  immo- 
rality the  public  conscience  in  Russia  is  perfectly  insensible; 
that  they  are  looked  upon  as  questions  of  taste,  of  feeling, 
of  comfort,  and  hygiene,  but  not  as  matters  calling  for 
attention,  censure,  or  reprobation  on  ethical  grounds. 
•  Juries  refuse  to  convict  even  when  the  most  cruel  and  abid- 
ing wrong  accompanies  the  gratification  of  bestial  lusts, 
and  would  suffice  elsewhere  to  send  the  criminal  to  penal 
servitude;  the  Government  accepts  infamy  as  the  price  of 
promotion,  and  appoints  to  positions  of  influence  over 
thousands  individuals  fit  only  to  serve  as  drunkards 
served  the  ancient  Spartans,  namely,  as  object  lessons 
inspiring  disgust;  the  Church  complacently  administers 
her  sacraments  to  the  married  lover  and  his  mistress,  asking 
for  no  sign  of  repentance,  no  pledge  of  amendment;  and 
even  the  press,  when  not  positively  contributing  to  perpet- 
uate this  insensibility  to  sin  and  shame,  adopts  the  equivo- 
cal expedient  of  damning  it  with  faintest  blame.  The 
disgusting  articles  that  appeared  in  scores  of  Russian  news- 
papers a  year  or  two  ago,  describing  the  slips  of  the  grant/es 
dames  of  the  two  capitals  grown  oblivious  of  their  plighted 
troth  in  the  seductive  company  of  Tartar  peasants  in  the 
Crimean  summer  resorts,  were  in  all  respects  worthy  of 
their  classic  models  in  the  Gil  Bias  of  Paris.  They  could 
not  be  literally  translated  here.  The  following  extract 
from  an  article  that  was  reproduced  in  many  provincial 
journals  breathes  an  infinitely  healthier  spirit:  — 

"  For  many  a  long  day  it  has  been  known  to  each  and  every  one  of 
us  that  there  are  less  females  in  St.  Petersburg  than  males,  although  to 
the  eye  they  seem  in  the  majority,  because  the  females  are  continually 
strolling  about  the  streets  while  the  males  sit  in  closed  premises  making 


1 66  RUSSIAN    -f RAITS   AND    TERRORS. 

domestic  and  foreign  history.  The  enormous  numerical  irregularity  of 
the  sexes  has  always  shown  itself  in  the  almost  hereditary  propensity  of 
the  males  to  seduce  other  men's  wives  and  the  habit  of  the  females  to 
grailually  mix  up  the  husbands  as  if  they  were  cards.  These  matrimo- 
nial deviations  from  the  fixed  standard,  however,  were  explained  as 
effects  of  the  rigor  of  the  climate,  of  the  laxness  of  morals  and  the 
exorbitant  cost  of  ladies'  necessaries.  It  occurred  to  no  one  to  glance 
at  statistics  and  take  the  opinion  of  science  upon  this  delicate  question."  ^ 

And  then  it  goes  on  to  show,  in  the  same  bantering  tone, 
that  as  there  are  403,830  men  to  277,397  women,  every 
husband  can  have  only  a  675th  i)art  of  a  wife,  the  natural 
consequence  of  which  is  a  combination  of  polyandry  and 
polygamy.  The  following  extract  from  the  Russian  New 
Review^-  while  characteristic  of  the  tone  of  a  large  section 
of  the  press  when  dealing  with  such  questions,  has  the 
additional  advantage  of  throwing  a  side  light  upon  the 
manners  of  the  people :  — 

"Throughout  the  world  the  duty  of  bathers  to  don  some  kind  of 
underclothing  while  in  the  w^ater,  is  imperative.  In  our  country  it  is 
completely  lost  sight  of.  If  you  pay  a  visit  to  the  seaside  your  mind  is 
involuntarily  carried  back  to  those  happy  days  when  our  mother  Eve 
had  not  yet  tasted  the  fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge.  At  first  such 
simplicity  shocks  you;  but  once  grown  used  to  it  you  yourself  think 
nothing  of  plunging  about  in  the  blue  waves  side  by  side  with  a  pretty 
naiad  who  is  endeavoring,  not  without  a  touch  of  coquetry,  to  show  you 
her  skill  in  swimming  deftly  in  various  postures.  Hard  by  you  descry 
a  kind-hearted  paterfamilias  leisurely  making  his  preparations  on  the 
open  beach,  together  with  all  the  members  of  his  family,  not  excluding 
the  pretty  maid-servant  or  nurse."  ■* 

And  yachtmen  in  the  Bosphorus,  who  may  have  innocently 
anchored  by  some  Russian  man-of-war,  are  startled  the  next 
morning  to  see  almost  the  entire  crew  ranged  naked  round 
the  bulwarks,  waiting,  regardless  of  their  proximity  to 
other  shipping,  to  plunge  into  the  sea  by  word  of  command. 
This  is  not  the  place  to  discuss  the  influence  of  the 
Russian  clergy  for  good  or  for  evil  upon  their  docile  flocks, 
and  the  remark  I  am  about  to  make  has  no  bearing  what- 
ever upon  that  question;  my  sole  object  in  making  it  is  to 
bring  out  in  stronger  relief  the  inability  of  the  Russian 
mind,  as  at  present  constituted  by  manifold  influences  that 
have  been  brought  to  bear  upon  it,  to  seize  the  relation 
between  unclean  living  and  moral  wrong.  If  it  be  true 
that 


1  The  article  from  which  this  extract  is  taken  was  reprinted  in  most  of 
the  provincial  organs  during  the  first  half  of  September,  1888. 
-  Novoye  Obozrenie  is  the  Russian  name  of  the  journal. 
3  Cf.  also  St.  Feterburgskia  Vedomosli,  13th  July,  1888. 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  167 

"  Tis  not  what  man 
Does  that  exalts  him,  but  what  man 
Would  do," 

it  is  equally  certain  that  the  place  a  man  occupies  in  the 
esteem  of  his  fellow-men,  and  his  consequent  power  of 
doing  good,  depend  far  less  upon  his  real  merits  than  upon 
the  good  or  bad  qualities  for  which,  rightly  or  wrongly, 
they  give  him  credit.  This  being  so,  what  conclusion  are 
we  warranted  to  draw  from  the  fact  that  the  popularity  of 
a  well-known  parish  priest  was  not  in  any  perceptible  degree 
lessened  by  the  rumors  circulated,  and  firmly  believed  by  his 
parishioners,  to  the  effect  that  he  was  addicted  to  a  terrible 
vice,  a  vice  for  which  no  name  can  be  given  which  could 
stand  in  these  pages.  His  real  guilt  or  innocence  is  beside 
the  question.  Charges  of  that  grave  nature  should  never 
be  believed,  still  less  repeated,  in  the  absence  of  over- 
whelming evidence;  and,  in  my  own  honest  opinion,  the 
rumor  in  question  was  a  diabolical  calumny.  But  that  is 
not  the  point;  what  astounds  and  perplexes  the  foreigner 
is,  that  a  firm  belief  in  the  truth  of  this  terrible  accusation 
did  not,  and  even  were  it  supported  by  unanswerable  evi- 
dence would  not,  materially  affect  the  relations  between 
priest  and  people. 

Public  opinion  as  represented  by  a  parish  is  not  a  whit 
more  easy-going  in  the  matter  of  clean  living  than  public 
'opinion  embodied  in  the  machinery  of  the  law,  whether 
we  consider  the  popular  jury  or  the  cool-headed  judges  of 
the  Senate.  Latitudinarian  views  resulting  from  the  habits 
and  customs  of  the  country,  and  from  a  course  of  educa- 
tion in  harmony  wUh  them,  rather  than  criminal  conniv- 
ance, constitute  the  true  explanation  of  this  strange  fact. 
A  law  framed  in  accordance  with  abstract  principles  may 
commend  itself  to  the  reason  of  intelligent  individuals;  it 
may  create  new  crimes  and  inflict  Draconian  punishments, 
but  if  it  runs  counter  to  the  popular  feeling  on  the  subject 
it  can  never  inspire'  disgust  of  the  prohibited  action,  nor 
bring  about  that  permanent  moral  improvement  which  it 
was  the  legislator's  object  to  secure.  A  jurisconsult  lately 
brought  to  my  notice  a  case  which  throws  considerable 
light  on  many  of  the  dark  corners  of  Russian  life,  and  on 
none  more  than  this  question  of  morality.  A  gentleman 
who  moved  in  the  best  society  was  popularly  believed,  nay, 
known  to  be  engaged  in  committing  acts  which  only  in 
ancient  Greece  or  modern  Orient  could  be   indulged   in 


l68  RUSSIAN   TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

with   impunity.     But   the   shocking  barbarity  with  which 
they  were  accompanied  would  have  insured  his  condemna- 
tion even  there.     The  axiom  volenti  non  fit  injuria  would 
have  been  powerless  to  save  him.     Moreover  the  diabolical 
way  in  which  he  went  to  work  to  first  introduce  the  subtle 
dismtegrating  poison  into  the  very  souls  of  his  victims 
threw  in  the  shade  the  worst  charges  that  Anytus  or^  Lycon 
ever  ventured  to  insinuate  against  Socrates.     In  England 
he  would  have  been  condemned  to  what  would  practically 
amount  to  penal  servitude  for  life.     On  the  initiative  of  a 
private   individual   this   gentleman  was    indicted    for   the 
offence.     A  cloud  of  witnesses  proved  the  charge,  bringing 
details  to  light  that  would  have  caused  him  to  be  lynched 
by  the  most  apathetic  and  lax-minded  community  in  Chris- 
tendom.   The  defence  set  up  was  that  the  alleged  acts  were 
sins,  not  crimes;  that  they  entailed  and  merited,  no  doubt, 
divine  punishment  hereafter,   but  were  merely  foibles  in 
the   eyes   of    enlightened   men   of   the  world,    weaknesses 
shared  by  kings  and  emperors.     This  defence  greatly  irri- 
tated the  jury.     "Listen  to  him,"  they  said  of  the  defend- 
ant's counsel;  "he  is  merely  making  use  of  this  case  to 
throw  dirt  at  our  beloved  Emperor;  let  us  show  him  how 
we  treat  such  conduct,"  and  they  promptly  brought  in  a 
verdict  of  guilty.     The  condemned  man  moved  for  a  new 
trial  on  a  writ  of  error  based  upon  a  puerile  quibble.     The 
point  was  referred  to  the  Senate,  the  Supreme  Court  of* 
Appeal,   composed  of  men  of  the  world  well  stricken  in 
years,  but  in  touch  with  the  best  society  of  the  empire. 
The  Senate  quashed  the  verdict  on  that  formal  ground,  and 
ordered  a  new  trial,  which  was  a  repetition  of  the  old  one 
in  all  respects  bift  one ;  the  defence  was  less  defiant  and 
the  verdict  was  an  acquittal.     1   am  assured  by  persons 
whose  testimony  is  worthy  of  belief,  that  before  his  formal 
accusation,    during  his  two   trials,    and  after   his  curious 
acquittal,  this  gentleman  continued  to  move  in  the  best  soci- 
ety;  a  privilege  not  nearly  so  extraordinary  as  it  seems,  if  we 
remember  that  many  of  the  gentlemen  who  compose  it  are 
well  known  to  be  continually  rendering  themselves  liable 
to  be  acquitted  in  like  manner  of  this  identical  charge. 

But  the  Government,  it  may  be  urged,  should  not  be 
held  in  any  degree  responsible  for  such  glaring  miscarriage 
of  justice;  it  is  incapable  of  dictating  to  juries  and  power- 
less to  influence  the  decision  of  the  Senate.  The  reply  to 
this  is  obvious :  if  a  poor  student,  a  feather-brained,  gen- 


SEXUAL    MORALITY    IN    RUSSIA.  1 69 

erous  imitator  of  Schiller's  Don  Carlos,  is  found  in  posses- 
sion of  a  book  of  Hertzen's,  a  photograph  of  Mazzini's,  a 
pamphlet  of  Professor  Dragomanoff' s,  no  degree  of  respect 
for  juries  or  senates  is  allowed  to  stand  between  him  and 
irremediable  life-long  ruin.  And  if  a  ruffian,  whose  soul 
hellfire  could  scarcely  cleanse  of  its  foulness,  is  tried  and 
found  guilty,  if  he  have  friends  in  the  Government,  a 
powerful  hand  that  reaches  even  to  the  bleak  deserts  of 
Siberia,  is  stretched  out  towards  him,  strikes  off  his  fetters, 
and  sets  him  free.  Some  five  or  six  years  ago  there  lived 
and  flourished  in  St.  Petersburg  a  director  of  a  very  fash- 
ionable grammar  school,  to  which  the  Ministry  of  Public 
Instruction  accorded  extensive  privileges.  His  name  was 
Bytschkoff;  were  it  Seneca  or  Epictetus  his  unparalleled 
depravity  would  have  made  it  a  Nessus'  shirt  of  infamy. 
His  school  was  an  Eastern  pare  aux  cerfs,  and  it  might  be 
so  still,  had  he  not  presumed  upon  prolonged  impunity 
and  gone  beyond  Hercules'  Pillars  of  depravity.  He  was 
brought  to  trial,  found  guilty,  and  sentenced  to  deportation 
to  Siberia.  The  sentence  was  carried  out,  and  he  set  out 
for  Siberia,  leaving  behind  him  a  beloved  brother,  whom 
his  ruin  did  not  disgrace,  and  who  remained  in  high  favor 
at  court,  a  personal  friend  of  the  Tsar.  And  in  course  of 
time  it  came  to  pass  that  the  exile  received  money  enough 
to  enable  him  to  undertake  a  long  journey;  and  his  jailers 
were  warned  against  excess  of  zeal,  and  while  they  were 
busy  thinking  of  other  things,  he  escaped  to  Switzerland. 
There  he  was  seen  and  spoken  to  two  years  and  a  half  ago 
by  astonished  Russians,  who  sent  the  news  to  St.  Petersburg, 
where  it  was  published  as  sensational  without  delay.  The 
next  day  the  Government  ordered  the  newspapers  to  publish 
a  categorical  denial  of  the  statement,  and  to  assure  their 
readers  that  he  was  in  Siberia,  not  in  Switzerland.  And 
the  journals  obeyed  and  lied. 

This  is  a  sample  of  the  action  of  the  Government.  As 
for  the  people,  enough  has  been  said  of  their  past  and  pres- 
ent to  justify  despair  of  their  future.  But  a  more  robust 
faith  in  humanity  and  a  more  intimate  acquaintance  with 
Russians  make  one  hope  rather  than  believe  that  their  truly 
rich  nature  may  be  endowed  with  some  irrepressibly  recu- 
perative force,  to  enable  it  to  assume  its  original  form  under 
more  auspicious  circumstances,  to  impel  their  many  latent 
qualities  to  work  their  way  onwards  and  upwards  through 
the  hard  crust  of  ages,  till  they  burst  into  the  light  of  day 


170  kUSSIAN   TRAITS   AND    TERRORS. 

and  fertilize  the  field  of  European  civilization.  The  gen- 
uine Russian  gentleman  and  the  ideal  Russian  lady  —  both 
exist,  and  are  to  be  found  among  sectarian  peasants  as  well 
as  in  certain  exclusive  salons  of  St.  Petersburg  —  are  among 
the  noblest  specimens  of  civilized  humanity;  the  refresh- 
ing unconventionality  of  thought  and  expression,  the  grace- 
ful simi)licity  of  manner,  the  wonderful  delicacy  of  feeling, 
the  generous  aspirations  and  noble  yearnings  —  might,  if 
they  grew  to  be  the  characteristics  of  the  nation,  effect 
great  things.  But  is  there  any  serious  hope  of  this?  Let 
the  Archbishop  of  Kherson  and  Odessa  reply,  who,  himself 
sprung  from  the  people,  has  spent  a  long  life  in  their  midst 
working  for  their  weal,  like  a  solitary  swallow  hopelessly  com- 
ing to  make  spring  before  the  sap  stirs  within  the  trees,  the 
frail  blossoms  are  hung  out  on  the  branches,  or  even  the 
snow-drop  has  looked  up  at  the  sun.  "On  the  whole,"  he 
said  last  year,  on  a  very  solemn  occasion,  "  the  state  of  things 
in  Russia  is  sad.  The  people's  minds  are  wofully  dark,  and 
there  is  no  sign  of  the  coming  dawn."  Nor  is  it  likely  that 
day  will  break  for  many  generations  yet  to  come.  Under  a 
Government  that  systematically  refuses  to  allow  the  people 
intellectual  or  moral  instruction,  that  closes  up  elementary 
schools,  appoints  ])rolligates  to  teach  in  higher  educational 
establishments,  banishes  forever  devoted  aposdes  who,  like 
Colonel  Pashkoff,  of  the  Horse  Guards,  were  vigorously 
and  successfully  cleansing  the  Augean  stables  of  moral  filth 
—  under  such  a  Government  therecan  be  but  faint  hope  of 
better  things.  English  readers  cannot  realize  the  ])rofound 
bitterness  of  heart  with  which  a  Russian  who  loves  his 
country  discusses  these  things  with  his  fellow-countrymen. 
It  is  gall  and  wormwood  to  him  to  have  to  write  of  them 
to  foreigners.  IJut  there  is  no  other  way  of  influencing 
rulers  who  are  impervious  to  shame.  The  Government  is 
responsible  for  a  state  of  things  which  every  honest  Russian 
admits  to  be  a  scandalous  disgrace  to'  the  civilized  world. 
The  side  on  which  man  comes  into  contact  with  the 
fathomless  depths  of  spiritual  nature  is  closed  up  in  the 
Russian,  made  inaccessible  to  the  waves  and  surges  of 
the  spiritual  ocean.  There  is  no  ideal.  Tht  video  meliora 
proboqiie,  i)roductive  in  most  men  of  a  salutary  dissatisfac- 
tion with  themselves  and  nerving  them  to  the  performance 
of  higher  things,  is  here  completely  lacking.  The  ordi- 
nary kussian  knows  no  better  than  he  does,  and  it  is  for- 
bidden  to   teach  him.      His  falls   are    not,    like    that  of 


§EXUAL    MORALltY    IN    RUSSIA.  ijfl 

Antreiis,  a  source  of  increased  strength.  There  is  no  honest 
effort  to  make  the  dead  of  to-day  the  rung  of  a  Jacob's 
ladder,  by  which  to  ascend  to  a  higher  level  to-morrow, 
and  so  onwards  to  perfection.  No  matter  how  deep  he 
may  sink  in  the  well  of  vice  he  descries  no  loadstar  in  the 
artificial  night  above  him,  no  faintest  glimmer  or  twinkle 
to  suggest  that  high  over  his  head  arches  an  infinite  starry 
heaven,  and  not  a  mere  amalgam  of  clouds,  mist,  and  fog. 
His  eyes  are  not  lighted  up  by  even  a  stray  gleam  of  that 
transcendental  reason  which  is  of  all  ages  and  most  men. 
They  are  murky,  sad,  blinded,  as  it  were,  by  the  smoke  of 
extinguished  spiritual  fire.  In  a  word,  the  life  of  a  Rus- 
sian is  not  a  progress;  it  is  a  station,  a  filthy  hovel,  magni- 
fied into  an  abiding  mansion  by  vision  as  distorted  as  that 
of  Titania  when  she  mistook  Bottom  the  joiner  for  Adonis. 


1/2  .      RUSSIAN    TRAITS   AND   TERRORS. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

THE   JEWS   IN   RUSSIA. 

"  Something  is  wrong,  there  needeth  change. 
But  what  or  where?  " 

Song  of  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra. 

It  has  often  been  a  matter  of  wonder  to  me  that  in  these 
days  of  rapid  communications,  "private  wires,"  special 
correspondents  and  international  journalism,  so  very  little 
should  be  known  and  so  very  much  rashly  written  in  this 
country  about  Russia.  France,  Germany,  and  F.ngland  are 
perhaps  equally  guilty  of  this  crime  of  Icse-majeste  against 
reason  —  their  writers  and  politicians  forming  and  express- 
ing confident  opinions  about  important  questions,  without 
the  slightest  foundation  in  fact,  — and  Englishmen  have 
not  quite  so  much  reason  to  blush  as  their  neighbors, 
seeing  that  they  are  but  a  little  less  familiar  with  the 
economical,  intellectual,  and  moral  condition  of  a  foreign 
and  not  over  friendly  people  than  with  that  of  their  own 
kith  and  kin  in  the  colonies.  A  more  serious  excuse  might 
perhaps  be  found  in  the  circumstance  that  the  press  of 
the  country  rather  than  its  readers  should  bear  the  blame 
of  ignorance  which  is,  in  many  cases,  equalled  only  by 
conceit;  as  it  is  the  press  that  furnishes  the  so-called  facts, 
solemnly  pledging  itself  to  their  accuracy,  while  the  public 
can  no  more  be  condemned  for  not  sifting  them  critically 
than  a  bookkeeper  can  be  blamed  for  not  spending  his 
time  in  verifying  the  statements  of  his  ready-reckoner. 
Thus  a  few  months  ago  The  Times,  through  its  correspond- 
ent, informed  its  readers  that  Madam  Tsebrikoff  had  been 
exiled  to  Pensa  in  the  Caucasus,  whither  she  had  been 
driven  in  a  kihitka,  thus  giving  circulation  to  a  statement 
containing  about  as  much  truth  and  meaning  as  if  a  Russian 
journal  of  the  same  day  had  announced  that  Mr.  Davitt 
had  been  imprisoned  by  the  Irish  Secretary  in  the  frightful 
prison  of  Sing  Sing,  in  Tipperary. 

Two  months  ago  a  "well-informed"  and  "widely  circu- 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  1 73 

lated  "  paper  assumed  its  readers  that  a  new  and  barbarous 
law  had  just  been  passed  in  Russia,  the  practical  effect  of 
which  was  to  doom  the  unfortunate  Jews  of  that  country  to 
exile  or  death;  and  this  caterer  for  political  information 
for  the  million  was  so  well  informed  of  what  was  passing 
in  "higher  spheres"  in  Russia,  that  he  was  able  to  quote 
textually  several  clauses  of  the  new  law,  the  mere  perusal 
of  which  reminded  Englishmen  —  who  had  begun  to  grow 
as  tired  of  Stanley  as  of  the  fasting  man  —  of  the  halcyon 
days  of  Bulgarian  horrors.  And  it  needed  several  weeks  of 
the  most  solemn  assurances  of  the  Russian  Government  to 
allay  an  excitement  that  ought  never  to  have  been  roused  or 
to  have  made  itself  felt  to  some  good  purpose  some  years 
ago.' 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  no  project  of  law  ever  passes  the 
Imperial  Council  in  June,  July,  or  August,  because  there 
are  no  sittings  of  that  body  all  through  the  summer  months, 
and  consequently  the  statement  of  the  correspondent  could 
not  have  deceived  any  one  who  had  any  real  knowledge  of 
Russia.  Moreover,  it  has  never  been  a  serious  question, 
with  those  who  govern  the  Russian  Empire,  of  banishing 
the  Jews  en  masse,  as  they  were  expelled  from  Spam  in 
1492.  A  portion  of  the  Russian  press  has,  it  is  true,  often 
advocated  this  drastic  method  of  dealing  with  them,  but 
the  press  has  less  effect  on  the  Government  than  the  scarcely 
audible  buzz  of  the  tiny  fly  struggling  in  the  web  on  the 
callous  spider  that  eyes  it  coldly  from  on  high. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be  a  grave  mistake  to  sup- 
pose that  because  the  Russian  Government  goes  method- 
ically to  work,  judiciously  blending  cunning  with  cruelty, 
patience  with  hatred,  the  lot  of  the  Jews  is  an  enviable 
one;  just  as  it  would  be  wrong  to  conclude  that,  because 
prisoners  in  Russia  are  often  treated  with  more  revolting 
cruelty  than  African  slaves,  the  movement  now  on  foot  to 
put  an  end  to  the  slave-trade  in  Africa  has  therefore  lost 
its  raison  d'etre.  How  far  the  lot  of  the  Russian  Jews  will 
enlist  the  sympathies  of  Englishmen  is  in  truth  of  very 
scant  importance  to  and  one;  to  what  extent  it  deserves 
those  sympathies  may  perhaps  appear  from  a  simple  state- 
ment of  the  case. 

1  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  the  Daily  Telegraph  published  a  few  serious 
papers  on  Russian  Jews  at  the  time,  denying  the  promulgation  of  new  laws, 
and  giving  a  fairly  complete  and  very  candid  statement  of  the  whole  ques-- 
tion, 


174  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

In  the  olden  times  of  the  Grand  1  )uchy  of  Moscow  there 
was  no  Jewish  question  to  disturb  the  peace  of  mind  of 
Russian  statesmen :  the  peaceful  Jews  were  then  kept  out  of 
the  country  more  successfully  than  the  martial  Tartars, 
more  resolutely  than  the  plague.  Every  Jew  found  there 
was  seized  and  expelled,^  no  reason,  however  weighty, 
being  accepted  as  sufficient  to  justify  the  pollution  of  the 
land  by  the  presence  of  a  member  of  the  race  that  crucified 
the  Saviour.  And  thus  the  native  population  were  left  to 
their  own  devices  —  the  stream  of  Russian  civilization  kept 
exceptionally  pure  from  Jewish  admixture  —  until  the  policy 
of  annexation  was  first  fairly  inaugurated,  when  Russia  rav- 
enously swallowed,  along  with  the  luscious  morsels  that 
belonged  to  her  neighbors,  the  trichines  that  found  such 
a  congenial  soil  in  her  body  politic  and  are  now  bidding 
fair  to  bring  about  a  collapse  of  the  entire  system.  The 
struggles  of  Russia  now  to  throw  off,  now  to  assimilate  and 
neutralize  this  dangerous  element,  are  instructive  if  not 
edifying. 

Little  Russia  was  the  first  territory  annexed,  and  with  it 
w^ere  takea  over  the  Jews  who  for  generations  had  been 
wont  to  look  upon  that  country  as  their  fatherland.  But 
if  the  Little  Russians,  who  had  been  induced  to  unite  by 
tempting  promises,  were  treated  with  scant  ceremony,  the 
Jews  could  scarcely  complain  of  receiving  still  less,  and  in 
1727  the  High  Privy  Council  promulgated  an  order  signed 
by  the  B^mpress  Catherine  L,  to  expel  the  "scurvy  Jews, '^ 
male  and  female,  who  are  living  in  Ukraine  (Little  Russia) 
and  in  Russian  cities  generally,  and  never  again  to  allow 
them  under  any  pretext  to  re-enter  the  country,  and  to  take 
due  care  that  in  future  the  land  be  vigilantly  guarded  and 
kept  free  from  them."  But  as  the  frontier,  even  in  those 
days,  was  extensive,  its  guardians  venal,  and  the  Jews 
persevering  and  ingenious,  many  of  the  latter  succeeded 
in  maintaining  their  foothold  without  sacrificing  their 
religion.  Peter  IL,  the  gentleness  of  whose  character 
reflected  itself   in  the   irresolution  of  his  policy,  relaxed 

1  Cf.  Complete  Code  of  Laws,  No.  662,  year  1676.  In  a  treaty  concluded 
with  Poland  in  1678  it  was  expressly  stipulated  that  "  the  merchants  and 
tradesmen  of  both  sides  will  be  free  to  travel  without  hindrance  into  each 
other's  country  '  except  the  Jews.'  " —  Ibid.,  No.  F30. 

'■2  There  is  no  adjective  in  the  original,  but  the  word  for  Jews  is  an  oppro- 
brious one  implying  still  more  than  is  expressed  by  the  epithet  I  have  added. 
The  same  word  is  still  employed  by  such  conservative  org;ans  of  the  Russian 
press  as  the  semi-ofticial  Novoye  Vremya  and  Graschdanin, 


THE    JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  1 75 

the  severity  of  this  law  to  the  extent  of  aTIowing  Jews  to 
visit  South  Russia  for  the  purpose  of  attending  the  fairs 
there;  a  privilege  which  he  thoughtfully  saddled  with  the 
condition  "that  they  should  not  take  out  of  the  country 
gold  or  silver  money,  nor  even  copper  coins."  "As  to 
living  in  Little  Russia,"  this  curious  ukase  concludes,  "it 
is  strictly  forbidden,  nor  shall  any  one  dare  to  harbor 
scurvy  Jews;  in  all  these  respects  it  is  decreed  that  the 
ukase  of  the  year  1727  shall  remain  in  force."  ^ 

The  Empress  Anna,  in  the  beginning  of  her  reign, 'gave 
permission  to  Jews  to  visit  Russia  for  purposes  of  com- 
merce, but  shortly  before  her  death,  repenting  of  that  and 
other  sins,  reverted  to  the  old  policy  of  exclusion,  which, 
however,  was  again  for  a  time  suspended  during  the  Russo- 
Turkish  war.  In  1742,  the  Empress  Elizabeth  framed  still 
more  stringent  laws  against  the  Jews  than  any  of  her  pre- 
decessors, and  piously  appealed  to  heaven  for  her  warrant. 
"Except  irremediable  harm  to  our  faithful  subjects  nothing 
can  ever  come  of  the  presence  in  the  land  of  such  inveterate 
haters  of  the  name  of  Christ  the  Saviour."^ 

Catherine  II.,  whose  policy  was  as  little  guided  by  her 
philosophy  as  were  the  metaphysics  of  many  venturesome 
old  schoolmen  by  their  religious  faith,  began  by  following 
in  the  steps  of  her  predecessors,  and  in  the  manifesto  she 
issued  during  the  earlier  part  of  her  reign  inviting  for- 
eigners to  come  and  settle  in  Russia,  in  consideration  of 
special  privileges  offered  them,  Jews  were  expressly  men- 
tioned as  disqualified.  But  the  annexation  of  certain  Polish 
governments,  inhabited  by  large  numbers  of  Jews,  which 
she  soon  afterwards  effected,  compelled  her  to  modify  a 
policy  that  was  based  upon  changing  interest  rather  than 
fixed  principle;  and  in  the  year  1769  she  permitted  the 
Jews  to  make  Russia  their  home,  on  condition  that  they 
settled  exclusively  in  the  south,  in  the  government  of  New 
Russia.  This  decree,  ^  was  the  foundation-stone  of  the 
famous  Pale  of  Settlement,  which  remains  to  the  present 
day  the  main  grievance  of  the  Jews  —  the  fruitful  source  of 
all  their  sufferings.  All  followers  of  the  Mosaic  law  who 
inhabited  the  Polish  provinces  at  the  time  of  their  annex- 
ation were  allowed  to  remain  where  they  were,  and  to  enjoy 


1  Complete  Code  of  Laws,  No.  5324. 

2  Ibid.,  No.  8673. 

8  Complete  Coll,  of  Laws,  No.  13383. 


1/6  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

the  same  rights  as  Russians;  but  it  was  not  open  to  them  to 
circulate  in  Russia  proper,  and  towards  the  close  of  the 
Empress's  reign  they  were  condemned  to  pay  double 
taxes.  ^ 

But  all  these  attempts  of  Russia  to  kick  against  the  pricks 
proved  ineffectual.  'l"he  Jews  obeyed  the  laws  of  nature 
rather  than  those  of  shortsighted  men,  with  results  that 
alarmed  the  statesmen  who  were  responsible  for  having 
made  the  two  incompatible.  An  Imperial  Commission 
was  tlien  created  (1802),  by  the  P^mperor  Alexander  sur- 
named  the  Blessed,  to  study  the  question,  and  two  years 
later  a  law  was  passed  which  appears  to  have  been  an  hon- 
est endeavor  to  carry  out  two  opposite  lines  of  policy,  on 
the  principle  of  doing  incompatible  things  by  halves.  One 
half  of  the  measures  are  intended  to  protect  the  Christians 
against  the  heartless  exploitation  of  the  Jews,  who  are  thus 
treated  as  born  enemies  of  their  Orthodox  fellow  subjects, 
while  the  other  half  is  meant  to  bring  about  the  brotherly 
union  and  ultimate  amalgamation  of  the  two  avowedly 
hostile  races.  Very  sordid  motives  were  put  before  them 
to  induce  them  to  become  Christians,  care  being  mean- 
while taken  to  keep  them  well  within  their  Pale  of  Settle- 
ment, which  was  considerably  narrowed,  no  Jew  being 
allowed  to  live  within  fifty  versts  of  the  frontiers.  It  was 
obviously  legislation  of  the  half-hearted  kind  —  an  attempt 
(to  use  a  i^opular  Russian  expression)  to  give  the  wolves 
a  feed  and  keep  the  sheep  whole,  and  like  all  such  efforts 
it  deservedly  failed. 

The  Emperor  Nicholas  began  his  reign  by  issuing  vari- 
ous ukases  in  the  same  spirit  —  forbidding  the  Jews  to 
circulate  in  Russia,  narrowing  the  Pale  still  more  by 
excluding  from  it  the  cities  of  Kieff,  Nicolaieff,  Sebastopol, 
and  even  certain  of  the  streets  of  Vilna,  and  generally 
carrying  out  a  policy  of  mild  repression.  On  its  becom- 
ing obvious  in  1835  that  most  of  these  measures  were  but 
mere  waste  paper,  the  whole  structure  of  previous  legisla- 
tion was  pulled  down  and  a  bill  passed  "to  enable  Jews  to 
live  comfortably  as  tillers  of  the  soil  or  artisans,  and  to 
keep  them  from  idleness  and  illegal  occupations."  They 
are  permitted  by  this  law  to  attend  fairs  in  the  great  centres 
of  Russia — Nischny  Novgorod,  Irbitsk,  Kharkoff,  etc. — 
and  special  privileges  are  promised  to  those  who  turn  their 

1  Ibid.,  No.  17224. 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  1 7/ 

attention  to  the  cultivation  of  the  soil,  an  occupation  which 
had  proved  so  fatal  to  Russian  Christians.  The  legislator 
was  evidently  desirous  on  the  one  hand  of  removing  all 
distinctions  between  Jews  and  Christians,  and  on  the  other 
of  localizing  the  religion  of  the  former  as  he  would  an 
infectious  disease.  Evidence  of  the  former  disposition  is 
to  be  found  in  the  clauses  which  throw  open  schools, 
gymnasies,  universities,  and  other  educational  establish- 
ments to  the  members  of  the  proscribed  faith,  and  proof  of 
the  latter  in  the  express  declaration  that  in  country  districts 
the  Jews  were,  as  theretofore,  to  remain  aloof  from  their 
Christian  fellow-subjects,  their  communes  to  be  separated 
from  those  of  orthodox  Christians;  and  even  in  the  cities 
the  same  barriers  and  distinctions  to  be  rigorously  main- 
tained. Worse  than  all,  as  soon  as  it  became  evident  that 
the  proscribed  people  thoroughly  appreciated  the  offer  of 
education,  by  sending  their  children  to  Christian  schools, 
where  they  became  the  most  successful  pupils  and  students, 
the  Emperor  issued  another  ukase  (in  1844)  to  the  Minister 
of  Public  Instruction,  declaring  it  necessary  to  open  Jewish 
schools  for  Jewish  children,  and  ordering  him  to  appoint 
a  commission  of  rabbis  to  draft  a  scheme  and  to  see  that  a 
special  tax  be  levied  on  the  Jews  for  the  support  of  these 
denominational  establishments. 

The  late  Tsar  Alexander  II.  was  desirous  of  contributing 
as  far  as  was  possible,  by  means  of  legislation,  to  the 
assimilation  of  the  Jewish  element  by  the  Christian  popu- 
lation, but  before  taking  any  steps  towards  the  accomplish- 
ment of  this  desire,  he  ordered  the  Minister  of  the  Interior 
to  have  detailed  reports  drawn  up  by  the  governors  and 
governors-general  of  the  districts  inhabited  by  Jews  con- 
cerning the  working  of  the  laws  already  in  force  and  the 
defects  remarked  in  their  conception  or  administration. 
The  Governors  of  the  provinces  of  Vitebak,  Mohileff,  and 
Minsk  gave  it  as  their  opinion  that  the  Jews  of  their  dis- 
tricts were  suffering  incalculable  harm  from  the  action  of 
the  law  depriving  them  of  the  rights  of  ordinary  Russian 
subjects  without  relieving  them  of  any  of  the  corresponding 
obligations.  Moreover,  the  towns,  they  added,  in  which 
Jews  were  authorized  to  live  were  so  congested  that  they 
could  get  but  little  work  to  do;  and  "when  they  do  receive 
orders  for  work,  they  are  compelled  to  have  recourse  to 
fraud.  This  explains  why  they  so  often  become  noxious 
members  of  society,  instead  of  conferring  upon  the  com- 


178  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

munity  and  upon  themselves  those  benefits  which,  under 
more  favorable  conditions,  one  would  naturally  expect 
from  them."  The  Governor  of  Poltava  informed  the  Min- 
ister that  the  Jews  of  the  south  of  Russia  differed  to  a  very 
considerable  extent  in  language,  dress,  and  mode  of  life 
from  their  co-religionists  in  other  parts  of  the  empire,  and 
that  the  difference  was  entirely  to  their  advantage.  As  a 
result  of  this,  "they  have  almost  wholly  assimilated  them- 
selves with  the  native  population;  wherefore  I  would  respect- 
fully Suggest  that  all  the  restrictions  now  in  force  against 
them  be  forthwith  abolished."  The  remaining  governors 
were  of  the  same  opinion,  and  the  Minister  of  the  Interior 
came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  accumulation  of  skilled 
Jewish  artisans  and  workmen  in  the  cities  of  the  Pale  of 
Settlement,  and  the  competition  resulting  between  them- 
selves on  the  one  hand  and  between  them  and  the  Chris- 
tians on  the  other,  "have  an  exceedingly  injurious  effect 
on  both  sides." 

Nothing  could  be  more  candid  than  this  avowal,  nothing 
more  well  meaning  than  the  intentions  it  called  into  being; 
but  between  intentions  and  their  realization  lies  an  abyss 
—  at  times  an  impassable  one.  "Before  the  sun  rises," 
says  a  Pittle  Russian  proverb,  "the  dew  may  eat  one's  eyes 
out."  Half-hearted  measures  of  relief  were  gradually  doled 
out,  certain  restrictions  abolished  wholly  or  in  part,  and 
the  administration  of  the  existing  laws  became  less  severe, 
a  difference  which  was,  in  itself,  as  long  as  it  lasted,  almost 
as  welcome  as  a  repeal  of  the  exclusive  legislation  com- 
plained of.  For  men,  not  measures,  really  rule  or  ruin  the 
nation;  no  other  country  possessing  such  a  ponderous, 
voluminous  collection  of  laws  as  the  lunpire  of  the  Tsars, 
no  other  people  so  utterly  lacking  the  conception  of  law, 
as  of  established  rules  to  be  respected  and  obeyed;  and 
what  can  be  more  demoralizing  to  a  nation  than  the  posses- 
sion of  laws,  the  transgression  of  which  is  the  rule,  the 
observance  the  rare  exception? 

Had  the  lunperor  Alexander  H.  lived  a  year  or  two 
longer,  it  is  highly  probable  that  there  would  now  no  longer 
be  a  Jewish  question  in  Russia;  for  the  emancipation  of 
that  people  was  one  of  the  points  of  the  constitution  which 
he  had  consented  to  grant.  His  son  and  successor  is 
credited  with  a  strong  personal  dislike  to  all  followers  of 
the  Mosaic  law,  and  is  resolved,  men  say,  to  grind  them 
down  to  the  intellccturd  (they  are  already  far  below  the 


THE    JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  1/9 

economic)  level  of  his  orthodox  subjects.  As  this  would 
be  a  heinous  crime,  it  may  possibly  be  a  foul-mouthed 
calumny;  but  it  is  not  a  dispassionate  survey  of  the  main 
acts  of  his  reign  that  would  bring  one  to  doubt  the  truth 
of  the  assertion.  The  chief  measure  now  in  force  against 
the  Jews  is  —  and  has  been  since  the  days  of  Catherine  II. 
—  the  prohibition  to  leave  the  Pale  of  Settlement.  No 
doubt  this  district  is  immense  in  extent,  comprising  the 
governments  of  Vilna,  Volhynia,  Grodno,  Kovno,  Minsk, 
Podolsk,  Yekaterinoslav,  Poltava,  Tshernigoff  and,  under 
certain  restrictions,  portions  of  Kieff,  Vitebsk,  and  Mohi- 
leff.^  But  for  the  Jews,  who  are  not  tillers  of  the  soil, 
who  are  compelled  to  belong  to  merchant  guilds  or  trade 
corporations  that  exist  only  in  cities  and  towns,  and  are 
debarred  from  engaging  in  many  pursuits  open  to  Chris- 
tians, the  immensity  of  this  territory  shrinks  to  an  incredible 
extent.  And  lest  the  Pale,  even  thus  narrowly  circum- 
scribed, should  seem  too  vast  a  hunting-ground  for  the 
"scurvy  Jew,"  his  Majesty  enacted,  three  years  ago,  that 
"until  further  orders,"  no  Jew  will  be  permitted  to  leave 
the  villages  or  hamlets  in  which  they  were  living  up  to  the 
15th  May,  1882.  And  as  during  those  six  years  hundreds, 
nay  thousands,  of  families  changed  their  place  of  residence 
to  other  villages  and  towns,  the  execution  of  this  law  has 
reduced  a  large  number  of  Jews  to  misery  and  ruin;  for 
not  only  do  those  suffer  who  are  compelled  to  leave  villages 
where  they  have  their  houses  and  their  capital,  but  the 
community  to  which  they  are  compelled  to  return,  and  in 
which  competition  has  already  reduced  wages  to  the  starva- 
tion line.  So  that  the  arena  is  in  reality  very  circumscribed 
in  which  Jew  meets  Jew  in  the  bitter  struggle  for  life,  and 
defeating  his  adversary  inflicts  insurable  wounds  upon 
himself. 

There  are  one  or  two  narrow  and  winding  paths  that 
lead  out  of  this  human  penfold,  but  those  who  take  them 
have  often  cause  bitterly  to  regret  their  enterprise  or  unrest. 
Jews  who  have  traded  for  not  less  than  five  years  as  mem- 
bers of  the  first  merchant  guild'  within  the  Pale  have  the 

1  Cf.  Law  concerning  Passports  and  Runaways,  vol.  xiv.,  div.  i.,  chap,  i., 
art.  16. 

2  In  Russia  there  are  two  merchant  guilds  (there  were  three  till  a  few 
years  ago)  :  the  members  of  the  first  pay  much  higher  fees  than  those  of 
the  second,  and  both  pay  larger  fees  and  taxes  than  the  petty  traders.  One 
must  be  a  man  of  considerable  means  to  belong  to  the  first  merchant  guild 
in  St.  Petersburg  or  Moscow.  In  the  latter  city  there  are  but  four  hundred 
members  of  the  first  guild  all  told,  many  of  whom  are  foreigners. 


l8o  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

right  to  apply  for  admission  to  the  same  guild  outside  of 
it.     But  the  exercise  of  this  right  bristles  with  difficulties. 
Thus,  to  say  nothing  of  the  petitions  which  he  must  send 
to  the  guilds,   the  police,   the  governors,  and  others,  the 
merchant's  first  real  embarrassment  is  caused  by  the  law 
which  prohibits  him  from  hiring  Christian  servants,  coupled 
with  the  circumstance  that  he  has  no   hope  of  finding  any 
in  Russia  proper,  where  Jews  are  few  and  belong  exclusively 
to  the  privileged  classes  from  which  the  ranks  of  domestic 
servants  are  never  recruited.     The  law^  which  obtained 
under  former  Emperors  allowed  the  merchant  in  this  case 
to  petition  the  Prefect  of  the  Police  of  St.  Petersburg  or 
the  Governor-general  of  Moscow  —  if  his  destination  were 
either  of  these  cities  —  for  permission  to  take  with  him 
from  the  Pale  a  certain  number  of  clerks  and  domestic 
servants,  setting  forth    in   the   petition   the   reasons   that 
determined  him  to  fix  the  particular  number  asked  for.     It 
then  depended  on  the  decision  of  these  dignitaries  how 
many   might   accompany   him,    and   from   their   decision 
there  was  no  appeal.     If  he  chose  some  other  city  for  his 
abode,  he  was  allowed  but  one  clerk  and  four  domestic 
servants,  all  of  whom  must  be  of  irreproachable  character 
and  free,  not  only  from  the  accusations,  but  even  from  the 
suspicion  of  crime.     It  is  as  easy  to  imagine  the  innumer- 
able and  serious  embarrassments  that  this  law  is  calculated 
to  raise  up  in  the  everyday  life  of  the  Jewish  merchant  — 
the  loss  of  time,   of  money,   of  health  —  as  it  is  difficult 
to  divine  the  good  purpose  which  the  legislator  had  in 
view  in  framing  it.     That  law  is  still  in  force;  but,  appre- 
hensive that  the  permission  it  accords  is  far  too  extensive, 
his  present  Majesty's  advisers  have  decreed  that  in  case  the 
merchant  should  disn>iss  or  otherwise  lose  his  servants,  it 
shall  not  be  open  to  him  to  send  to  the  Pale  for  others  to 
replace  them  but  he  must  shift  as  best  he  can.-     Moreover, 
if  from  any  cause  whatever  he  cease  to  belong  to  the  first 
guild  before  the  lapse  of  ten  years,  he  forfeits  his  right  to 
reside  in  Russia  and  must  return  to  the  Pale.     The  cir- 
cumstance that  he  availed  himself  during  his  stay  of  his 
legal  right  to  purchase  house  property,  or  land    in   Rus- 
sia  proper,     is   not   deemed    sufficiently   grave    to    cause 


1  Vol.  xiv.,  div.  i.,  chap,  i.,  art.  i6. 

2  Decision  of  Minister  of  Interior  and  Minister  of  Finances,  given  on  17 
)  April,  1885. 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  iSl 

an  exception  to  be  made  in  his  favor.  Landlord  or 
householder,  it  matters  not,  the  law  compels  him  to  leave 
everything  and  return  to  the  Pale,  and  logic  and  humanity 
are  utterly  powerless  to  help  him.^ 

In  Russia  every  Jew  is  compelled  to  belong  to  one  of  the 
established  classes  into  which  the  tax-paying  community 
is  divided,  and  unless  he  has  been  received  into  one  of 
the  learned  professions,  he  must  be  at  all  times  ready  to 
prove  by  documents,  that  require  to  be  renewed  every  year, 
that  he  is  a  skilled  artisan,  a  merchant  of  one  of  the  two 
guilds,  a  petty  trader,  or  an  agriculturist.  This  means, 
besides  endless  worry  and  frequent  insults  from  secretaries 
and  petty  puffed-up  officials,  the  payment  of  considerable 
annual  fees  and  —  what  is  sometimes  more  irksome  and 
oppressive  —  permanent  residence  in  the  city  or  town  in 
which  his  guild  or  corporation  has  its  headquarters."  If 
sheer  want  and  the  evident  hopelessness  of  relieving  it 
in  a  given  town  compel  a  Jew  to  disregard  this  law  and 
wander  about  from  place  to  place,  as  many  have  done  and 
still  are  forced  to  do,  he  is  arrested  and  treated  or  mal- 
treated as  that  most  miserable  of  human  wretches,  a  Russian 
brodyagJ'' 

But,  independently  of  those  general  taxes  paid  by  Jews 
for  the  support  of  institutions  from  the  benefits  of  which 
they  are  in  most  cases  expressly  excluded,  they  are  also 
subjected  to  a  special  system  of  taxation,  from  which 
Christians  are  exempt,  and  which,  though  destined  in  theory 
for  the  special  needs  of  the  Jewish  community,  are  never- 
theless employed  in  part  to  replenish  the  imperial  coffers.^ 
Thus  the  so-called  "  Box  tax  "  *  is  one  of  the  most  compre- 
hensive tributes  ever  levied  upon  a  community,  its  oppres- 
siveness being  intensified  by  the  odious  method  practised 
of  farming  it  out  to  greedy  speculators.  For  every  animal, 
fowl,  and  bird  killed  for  food  according  to  Jewish   rites 


1  Cf.  Complete  Collection  of  Laws,  No.  41779  and  48175. 

2  Complete  Collection  of  Laws,  vol.  xiv.,  div.  i.,  chap,  i.,  arts,  i  and  2. 

3  This  terrible  word  brodyag  does  not  convey  much  to  the  ordinary 
English  reader.  Some  facts  relating  to  the  subject  of  the  indescribable 
tortures  inflicted  on  this  army  of  unpitied  wretches  have  already  been 
given  in  the  chapter  on  "  Russian  Prisons."  Cf.  Complete  Collection  of 
Laws,  vol.  ix.,  art.  953. 

■*  Complete  Collection  of  Laws,  vol.  v.,  art.  281 ;  Supplement,  chap,  i., 
art.  I. 

5  So  called  because  the  proceeds  were  kept  in  a  box  employed  solely  for 
this  purpose. 


1 82  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

(Kosher)  a  fixed  sum  has  to  be  paid.  And  on  every  pound 
of  that  same  meat,  and  on  every  one  of  those  identical  fowls, 
an  additional  sum  is  levied  when  they  are  sold.  Jews  who 
have  taken  their  degrees  in  universities,  or  have  succeeded 
in  gaining  admission  to  a  learned  profession,  may,  on  satis- 
fying their  butcher  that  they  are  doctors  or  masters,  pur- 
chase a  certain  quantity  of  animal  food  free  of  this  duty : 
viz.,  two  pounds  and  a  half  of  meat  a  day,  if  the  privileged 
person  is  single,  and  four  pounds  and  a  half  if  married; 
he  may  also,  if  a  bachelor,  jnirchase  on  the  same  advan- 
tageous conditions  one  fowl  or  bird  daily,  and  two  if  he  be 
a  family  man.'  In  addition  to  this  there  is  a  candle  tax, 
the  proceeds  of  which  are  employed  to  support  those 
denominational  schools  with  which  the  Jews  would  most 
gladly  dispense,  if  they  were  allowed  to  avail  themselves 
of  the  ordinary  educational  establishments,  to  which  they 
have  quite  as  much  right  as  their  Christian  fellow-subjects. 
Over  and  above  these  oppressive  tributes,  all  Jews  have  to 
pay  a  certain  percentage  —  from  which  Christians  are,  of 
course,  exempt  —  on  the  rent  they  receive  for  their  houses, 
shops,  stores,  granaries;  on  the  gross  income  they  receive 
from  the  sale  of  wine  in  public-houses  and  inns;  they  are 
likewise  subject  to  a  special  annual  tax  on  distilleries  and 
breweries,  glass  works,  copper  and  iron  works,  tar,  pitch, 
and  tallow  works,  and  for  the  permission  to  set  up  as 
catde-breeders.  In  addition  to  this,  all  money  left  by 
deceased  Jews  pays  a  fixed  percentage  to  the  same  com- 
mon fund;  and  finally  a  fine  is  paid  for  the  authoriza- 
tion to  wear  Hebrew  apparel.  "All  Jews  who  desire  to 
wear  a  skull  caj)"  (I  am  quoting  textually  from  the 
statute  book),  "are  hereby  subjected  to  a  permanent  tax 
of  neither  more  nor  less  {sic/)  than  five  silver  roubles 
a  year  each."-  This  is  not  ^an  extract  from  obsolete  laws 
framed  during  the  Middle  Ages,  but  a  clause  of  a  law  drawn 
up  in  the  last  (piarter  of  the  sober  nineteenth  century,  and 
strictly  enforced  to-day.  That  the  legislator  w^as  in  grim 
earnest  about  the  matter  is  evident  from  the  following 
provision  concerning  the  wearing  of  other  articles  of  Jewish 
dress :  "  In  fixing  the  amount  of  taxes  to  be  levied  for  the 
right  of  wearing  Hebrew  dress,  male  and  female,  the  gov- 
ernor of  the  district  is  hereby  enjoined  to  take  heed  that 


1  Supplement  to  article  281  of  fifth  vol.  of  Laws. 
-  Ibid.,  art.  10,  observ.  4. 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  1 83 

it  be  considerably  augmented  in  comparison  with  the  other 
objects  subject  to  the  Box  Tax."  ' 

It  is  difficult  to  convey  anything  like  an  adequate  idea  of 
the  vexation,  disputes,  and  bad  blood  caused  by  the  spirit 
in  which  this  law  is  administered.  But  it  is  scarcely  needful 
to  descant  upon  the  spirit,  when  the  letter  itself  contains 
so  much  to  bear  out  the  charge  of  deliberate  injustice 
which  has  been  frequently  advanced  against  it.  Take, 
for  instance,  the  provision  made  for  the  not  uncommon 
case  in  which  the  animal  or  fowl  is  slaughtered  ■  in  one 
place  and  sold  in  another.  "Whereas  the  Box  Tax  is 
levied  according  to  weight  on  the  sale  of  the  objects  liable  to 
it,  be  it  ordained  that  if  a  Jew,  having  slaughtered  an  ani- 
mal within  the  boundaries  of  one  tax  farm,  desire  to  carry 
it  to  another  for  the  purpose  of  selling  it,  he  is  liable  to 
pay  the  tax  in  the  first  tax-farming  district  for  the  slaughter 
alone;  but  the  tax  farmer  of  the  second  district  possesses 
the  right  to  exact  payment  both  of  the  tax  for  slaughter 
and  also  of  the  tax  for  sale."  '^  This  is  but  a  sample.  The 
voluminousness  and  minuteness  —  to  say  nothing  of  the  vex- 
atiousness  —  of  the  laws  against  the  Jewish  millions  who 
have  appreciably  contributed  economically  and  intellect- 
ually to  the  prosperity  of  the  empire,  would  drive  any  one 
but  a  Talmudist  or  a  Benedictine  to  despair. 

But  besides  merchants  of  the  first  guild,  university  grad- 
uates of  the  highest  standard,  and  doctors  and  masters,  are 
also  privileged  to  pass  beyond  the  Pale  of  Settlement. 
Skilled  artisans  can  likewise  seek  admission  to  the  corpora- 
tions, or  "Tsekhs,"  of  their  respective  calling  in  any  part  of 
the  empire.  This  clause  enfranchises,  to  all  appearance, 
a  numerous  class  of  men,  which  might  perhaps  be  made  to 
include  the  best  portion  of  the  Hebrew  people.  These 
appearances,  which  would  probably  be  trustworthy  enough 
if  observed  in  any  other  part  of  Europe,  are  rightly  decep- 
tive in  Russia,  and  Englishmen  who  come  in  contact  with 
the  wan,  worn,  wizen-faced  Russian  Jews  —  like  so  many 
Lazaruses  risen  too  late  from  the  dead  to  live  longer  than 
a  few  short  hours  —  who  played  such  a  tragic  part  in  the 
sweating  scandals  that  came  to  light  in  T,ondon  some  time 
ago,  will  readily  understand  that  the  children  of  creatures 
of  this  stamp  —  and  the  majority  of  Russian  Jews  are  such 


1  Supplement,  clia]i.  iii.,  art.  14. 

2  Ibid.,  Supplement,  art.  45. 


184  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

—  have  as  much  chance  of  becoming  astronomers  as  of 
(lualifying  for  what  the  law  in  Russia  understands  by 
"skilled  artisans."  It  is  less  difificult,  however,  for  the 
daughters  of  the  classes  who  possess  a  fairly  sufticient 
income  to  become  midwives  —  a  profession  which  also 
confers  upon  those  w'ho  practise  it  the  right  of  passing 
beyond  the  Pale.'  But  his  present  Majesty's  Government, 
noticing  that  many  young  Jewesses  succeeded  in  passing 
the  examinations  required  for  the  certiiicate  of  midwife, 
instead  of  withdrawing  the  privilege  accorded  by  law  to 
this  profession,  as  would  be  natural  under  the  circum- 
stances, acted  somewhat  like  the  scrupulous  Quaker  of 
apocryphal  celebrity  who,  when  the  pirate  caught  hold  of 
one  of  the  ship's  ropes  in  order  to  board  the  vessel, 
exclaimed :  "  Thou  wantest  this  rope,  friend  ?  "  (and  speedily 
cutting  it)  "take  it;  may  it  stand  thee  in  good  stead"; 
they  confirmed  the  privilege,  but  explained  that  from 
December,  1885,  it  would  not  extend  from  midwives  to  the 
children  of  such  Jewesses,  who  would  be  compelled  to  live 
in  the  Pale.-  Another  instructive  instance  of  the  way  in 
which  laws  favorable  to  the  Jews  can  be  made  oppressive 
without  being  formally  abolished  occurred  two  years  ago  in 
Kieff.  A  certain  M.  (ioldenberg,  who  had  obtained  his 
degree  at  the  University,  and  is  therefore  qualified  to  live 
in  Russia  proper,  own  houses,  and  land,  etc.,  resolved  to 
hand  over  to  his  wife  a  house  that  belonged  to  him  in  the 
Sophia  Street.  The  deed  of  transfer  was  duly  drawn  up, 
but  the  authorities  refused  to  register  it.  M.  Goldenberg 
a])pealed  to  the  law  courts,  relying  upon  the  express  terms 
of  the  law  (y\rt.  100,  vol.  x.,  parts  i  and  5),  which  enacts 
that  the  husband  communicates  all  his  civil  rights  and 
privileges  to  his  wife.  But  the  law  courts  decided  that 
every  statute  concerning  the  Jews  must  be  interpreted  in 
a  restrictive  sense,  and  consequently  they  upheld  the  refusal 
of  the  authorities  to  validate  the  act  of  transfer,  dismissing 
the  suit  with  costs,  on  the  ground  that,  though  M.  Golden- 
berg himself  possesses  civil  rights,  he  does  not  communi- 
cate them  to  his  wife. 

The  most  arduous  way  of  obtaining  the  right  of  free 
circulation  throughout  the  empire  would  naturally  seem 
that  which  leads  through  the  universities,  or  one  of  the  higher 

1  Coll.  of  Laws,  vol.  xiv.,  sect,  i.,  chap.  iii. 

2  Decision  of  the  Department  of  the  Police  on  the  30th  December,  1885. 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSTA.  1 85 

educational  establishments,  for  the  children  of  men  who  can 
never  tell  in  the  morning  whether  they  and  their  families 
may  not  have  to  go  to  bed  supperless  at  night.  And  yet 
so  painfully  vivid  was  the  consciousness  of  the  horrors 
from  which  they  would  thus  escape,  so  powerful  the  aver- 
sion to  go  back  to  vegetate  and  rot  in  the  hateful  Pale,  that 
hundreds  of  young  men  entered  the  universities,  valorously 
battled  for  years  with  want,  sickness,  and  discouragement, 
many  of  them  like  Heyne,  the  German  classical  scholar 
who  first  raised  philology  to  the  dignity  of  a  science,  often 
exchanging  their  dinner  for  tallow-candles,  which  burned 
during  whole  nights  in  their  garrets  and  cellars,  lighting 
them  on  to  knowledge  and  to  fame.  And  the  Government, 
seeing  that  knowledge  is  power,  and  that  it  is  not  good 
that  power  should  be  placed  in  the  hand  of  "vile  Jews," 
resolved  to  close  up  this  issue  out  of  misery,  igno- 
rance, and  the  Pale.  When  the  present  Tsar  succeeded 
to  the  throne  the  educational  law,  in  so  far  as  it  affected 
the  rights  of  Jews  to  have  their  children  taught  in  the  ordi- 
nary schools  of  the  empire,  was  formulated  as  follows :  "  Jew- 
ish children  may  be  admitted  into  and  educated  in  the  State 
educational  establishments,  private  schools,  and  boarding 
schools  of  the  district  in  which  they  reside,  no  difference 
whatever  being  made  between  them  and  other  children."  ' 
This  law  was  in  force  down  to  the  19th  June,  1885,  when 
his  Majesty  ordered  the  admission  of  Jews  to  the  Tech- 
nological Institute  -  of  Kharkoff  to  be  limited  to  10  per  cent, 
of  the  total  number  of  students.  Nine  months  later  his 
Majesty  w^as  "graciously pleased,"  says  the  official  document, 
"  to  forbid  absolutely  the  admission  of  any  Jew  to  the  Veteri- 
nary Institute  of  Kharkoff."  On  the  17th  December,  1886, 
the  present  Minister  of  Public  Instruction  —  an  Armenian  by 
birth  —  promulgated  a  law  the  preamble  of  which  declared 
that  whereas  very  many  young  Jews,  eager  to  partake  of 
the  benefits  of  higher  classical,  technical,  and  professional 
education,  were  annually  presenting  themselves  for  admis- 
sion to  the  universities,  etc.,  passing  the  examinations  and 
prosecuting  their  studies  in  the  various  establishments  of 
the  empire,  it  was  found  desirable  to  put  a  stop  to  such 
an  unsatisfactory  state  of  things,  to  which  end  it  was 
enacted  that  in  future  the  number  of  Jewish  students  in 

1  Coll.  of  Laws,  vol.  ix.,  book  i.,  chap,  iv.,  art.  966. 

2  There  are  but  two  Technological  Institutes  in  all  Russia. 


1 86  RUSSIAN   TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

Russian  universities  should  not  exceed  lo  per  cent,  of  the 
entire  number  of  students  in  the  universities  within  the 
Pale,  5  per  cent,  in  other  provincial  universities,  and  3 
per  cent,  in  those  ofMoscow  and  St,  Petersburg;  and  on 
the  8th  luly,  1887,  the  same  measure  was  applied  to  all 
gymnasies  or  grammar  schools  without  exception. 

'•The  immediate  results  of  this  curious  legislation  were 
painful  in  the  extreme;  thousands  of  young  men  who,  by 
dint  of  years  of  hard,  steady  work  and  stoic  self-denial  on 
their  part  and  on  the  part  of  their  parents,  had  at  last  come 
within  sight  of  the  promised  land,  were  rudely  awakened 
from  their  day-dreams  and  jeeringly  told  to  return  to  their 
"vile"  people  to  live  and  die,  pariahs  among  helots.     I 
shall  never  forget  the  harrowing  scenes  1  witi;essed,  the 
tears,  the  entreaties,  the  wailing  and  despair  immediately 
after  the  passing  of  that  drastic  law:  parents  begging  their 
Christian  friends  — ay,  and  entreating  their  Christian  ene- 
mies—  to  intercede  with  the  minister  to  except  their  only 
child  from  the  operation  of  the  Act;  yo.ung  boys  putting 
on  the  ill-fitting  masks  of  dissimulation  and  endeavoring 
by   flattery  administered   to  the  sons  of  high  ofificials  — 
their  own  schoolfellows  —  to  obtain  jiermission  to  finish 
the  studies  already  brilliantly  begun  or  well-nigh  ended; 
orthodox   priests,    grave   Russian  officials,   and  even  well- 
known  statesmen  gibing   and    jeering  at  the  checkmated 
Jew.      One   of    the   bitterest  and   i)ossil)ly  best   deserved 
reproaches  which  Christian  writers  administer  to  Julian  the 
Emperor  was  the   insidiousness  of  his  persecution  of  the 
Christians,  as  manifested  in  the  order  he  issued  i)rohibit- 
ing  them  from  attending  lectures  in  the  schools.     Julian 
couched  that  order  in  language  as  elegant  and  brilliant  as 
that  of  Lucian,  and  defended  it  with  arguments  worthy  of 
Aristotle  —  invulnerable  to  anything  more  logical  than  an 
appeal  to  a  highly-developed  sentiment  of  humanity.     The 
legislators  of   Holy   Russia  succeeded  in  closely  copying 
Julian's  insidiousness  without  imitating  his  wit  or  appreci- 
ating his  logic.     My  readers  do  not,  I  feel  confident,  need 
to  be  told  whether  the  grave  legislators  of  a  vast  empire 
engaged  in  the  practical  solution  of  a  most  delicate  ques- 
tion—fate  of  millions  of  their  subjects  —  are  justified  in 
giving  to  laws  adverse  to  these  millions  the  odious  form 
of  a  sneer  at  their  religious  tenets.     It  had  been  usual  in 
Russia  at  all  times  to  profess  and  occasionally  to  practise 
respect  for  the  Jewish  observance  of  the  Sabbath.     Jewish 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  187 

boys  were  not  compelled  to  attend  school  on  Saturdays, 
nor  witnesses  —  if  they  objected  —  to  take  an  oath  in  courts 
of  justice  on  that  day.  But  since  the  present  Tzar  ascended 
the  throne  all  that  has  been  changed.  Thus,  among  the 
laws  concerning  the  education  of  Jews  we  read:  "The 
learned  Committee  of  the  Ministry  of  Public  Instruction, 
having  deliberated  upon  the  question  whether  Jewish  pupils 
of  grammar  schools  should  be  excused  from  written  exam- 
inations on  Saturdays,  ,  .  .  decided  that  once  they  enter 
public  educational  establishments  Jews  are  bound  to  submit 
to  the  rules  thereof,  and  the  very  act  of  entrance  into  these 
schools  is  of  itself  a  proof  that  they  and  their  parents  have 
outgrown  that  exclusivcness  which  stickles  for  the  strict 
observance  of  the  Sabbath.''''^  This  jest  is  the  deliberate 
work  of  the  most  learned  body  of  men  in  the  most  enlight- 
ened department  of  the  Government  of  Russia  —  work  for 
which  they  are  paid  out  of  the  hard-earned  wages  of  the 
Jew,  at  whose  religious  convictions  and  moral  courage 
they  thus  poke  fun ! 

The  circumstance  that  Jewish  children  seek  for  education 
in  schools  founded  for  children  belonging  to  all  religious 
persuasions  being  thus  authoritatively  construed  as  a  proof 
that  they  and  their  parents  laugh  in  their  sleeves  at  one  of 
the  fundamental  tenets  of  their  faith,  the  only  course  open 
to  parents  who  objected  to  the  practical  consequences  of 
this  interpretation  was  to  found  schools  of  their  own  — 
a  costly  solution,  it  is  true,  but  the  only  feasible  one. 
Several  communities  unhesitatingly  adopted  it  and  set 
about  availing  themselves  of  the  law  which  conferred  this 
right  upon  them.^  But  the  Government,  informed  of 
their  intention,  forthwith  repealed  that  law,  and  declared 
by  a  decree  of  the  Minister  of  Public  Instruction  that  it 
was  no  longer  advisable  to  authorize  the  opening  of  such 
schools,  inasmuch  as  the  ordinary  educational  establish- 
ments that  exist  for  children  of  all  religious  persuasions 
outside  the  Pale  would  also  satisfactorily  meet  the  require- 
ments of  the  Jews.'^  The  logical  outcome  of  these  two 
legislative  acts  is  therefore  that,  on  the  one  hand,  Jewish 
parents  desirous  of  having  their  children  instructed  must 
send  them  to  Christfan  schools,    if  there  happen  to  be  a 


1  Circular  of  the  Ministry  of  Public  Instruction.     No.  15038. 
■■^  Collection  of  Laws,  vol.  ix.,  sect,  i.,  art.  969,  and  observations, 
3  Ministerial  Circular,  No.  7,  of  the  year  1888.  * 


l88  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

vacancy  there;  and  on  the  other  hand,  their  doing  so  is 
regarded  by  the  Government  as  a  sort  of  mild  apostasy,  in 
consequence  of  which  they  will  be  no  longer  treated  as 
strictly  orthodox  Jews. 

Thus  foiled  and  checkmated  on  every  side,  small  wonder 
that  some  of  the  most  ambitious  or  least  steadfast  among 
them  brought  themselves  to  ])urchase  such  instruction  as 
grammar  schools  could  give  them  by  the  formal  rejection 
of  all  the  specially  Talmudic  doctrines,  and  the  adoption 
of  the  faith  of  the  sect  of  Karaim,  who  in  Russia  enjoy 
privileges  that  are  denied  the  Talmudists.  Thus  a  number 
of  young  men  in  the  Crimea,  after  much  inner  struggling 
and  hesitation,  resolved  to  stifle  their  scruples  and  take 
this  doubtful  course;  but  they  had  first  to  petition  the 
Minister  of  the  Interior  (an  Atheist,  as  it  chanced)  for  per- 
mission to  take  the  fateful  step.  They  were  soon  made 
aware,  however,  that  they  were  asking  for  the  moon;  the 
heavens  and  the  earth  may  pass  away,  but  no  Russian  Jew 
can  ever  abjure  his  faith  in  order  to  become  a  member  of 
the  Karaim  sect — for  a  law  of  Catherine  11.  forbids  it. 
There  was  now  only  one  other  way  to  obtain  the  coveted 
boon,  namely  by  stealth,  and  this  case  has  also  been 
thoughtfully  provided  for  by  the  wise  legislators,  who 
decreed  that  those  Jewish  parents  who,  on  sending  their 
children  to  school,  neglect  to  make  declaration  that  they 
are  Jews,  will  be  subjected  to  exactly  the  same  punishment 
as  if  they  were  convicted  of  —  forgery.'  This  sounds 
somewhat  harsh  to  I'Jiglishmen;  it  may  also  seem  strange 
to  logicians  and  legislators  of  every  nation;  but  the  Jews 
feel  that  they  have  reason  to  be  thankful  for  the  leniency 
that  refrained  in  such  cases  from  treating  them  as  incen- 
diaries or  regicides. 

The  Hebrew  people  in  Russia  are  characterized  by  an 
insatiable  thirst  for  such  education  as  can  be  had  in  that 
country;  it  would  seem  to  partake  of  the  nature  of  a  pas- 
sion that  grows  with  their  growth,  gaining  strength  from  the 
very  opposition  it  encounters."  'I'he  Ciovernment,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  firmly  resolved  to  starve  it  out  and  to  thrust 

1  Collection  of  Laws,  vol.  ix.,  art.  968.  » 

2  According  to  the  statistics  collected  by  the  Ministry  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion before  the  introduction  of  the  measures  forbidding  Jews  to  educate  their 
children  (1885-6),  the  percentage  of  Russian  children  in  the  higher  edu- 
cational establishments  of  the  empire  was  twenty-two  in  ten  thousand, 
whereas  the  percentage  of  Jewish  children  amounted  to  forty-eight  in  ten 
thousand. 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  1 89 

the  Jews  back  to  ignorance,  blind  obedience,  and  the  Pale. 
And  this  is  perfectly  natural;  if  it  seems  immoral,  it  is 
only  to  those  English  Russophiles  with  whom  fanaticism  is 
the  sole  substitute  for  knowledge,  and  who  damage  the 
cause  they  would  further  by  judging  such  acts  by  a  Euro- 
pean standard  of  morality  —  a  mistake  which  no  Russian 
statesman  will  ever  commit.  The  reasons  that  make  a 
dispassionate  obser\'er  look  upon  the  present  persecution 
of  five  or  six  million  Jews  as  natural  are  not  far  to  seek : 
they  are  all  comprised  in  the  one  principle  of  self-preser- 
vation applied  by  a  people  which  is  standing  on  a  much 
lower  moral  and  intellectual  level  than  the  bulk  of  Euro- 
peans. 

An  autocracy  may  at  times  be  quite  as  good  and  wise  a 
government  as  a  republic  or  a  constitutional  monarchy, 
and  no  honest  student  of  history,  whatever  political  opin- 
ions he  may  profess,  can  withhold  his  admiration  from  men 
like  Oliver  Cromwell, 'or  even  Dr.  Francia.  But  the  autoc- 
racy of  Russia,  in  which  tens  of  thousands  of  irresponsi- 
ble starlets  devour,  like  human  locusts,  all  the  material  and 
moral  resources  of  the  people,  is  a  foul  stain  on  modern 
Europe,  which  only  crime  can  perpetuate  and  human  blood 
wash  away.  The  logical  correlative  of  such  rulers  is  an 
ignorant,  broken-spirited,  shiftless  people;  and  the  rulers 
are  resolved  to  keep  the  bulk  of  Russians  ignorant,  broken- 
spirited,  and  shiftless,  on  the  principle  that  he  who  wishes 
for  eggs  must  put  up  with  the  cackling  of  hens  —  qui  viilt 
finem  villi  media.  This  is  the  key  to  that  series  of  oppres- 
sive laws  enacted  during  the  past  five  years,  the  undisguised 
object  of  which  is  to  deprive  the  masses  not  only  of  what 
is  usually  termed  education,  but  of  all  kind  of  instruction 
whatever.  The  results  obtained  up  to  the  present  moment 
are  magnificent  or  disastrous,  according  to  the  angle  of 
vision  from  which  we  view  them;  the  bulk  of  the  Russian 
people  are  disgustingly  servile,  incredibly  superstitious, 
hopelessly  shiftless  and  improvident,  the  natural  prey  of 
every  passing  quack  or  impostor,  and  the  power  of  the  Tsar 
is  proportionately  strengthened.^     The   semi-official  jour- 


1  To  give  a  case  in  point,  the  iWovoye  Vremya,  describing  how  the  Jews 
of  the  district  of  Starokonstantinovsk  return  to  hamlets  and  villages  in 
which  they  are  forbidden  to  reside,  almost  as  fast  as  they  are  driven  out, 
adds:  "The  Russian  peasantry,  instead  of  assisting  the  police  to  expel 
them,  do  just  the  reverse  —  harbor  and  screen  them  from  justice,  and  when 
interrogated  deny  that  the  Jews  in  question  live  there,  and  assert  that  they 


IC|0  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

nal  of  the  capital  describes  the  Russians  as  "a  people  run 
wild,  savage,  supine.  The  judges  and  crown  lawyers  of 
the  empire,"  it  adds,  "can  testify  that  the  number  of 
words  in  use  amoiif^  the  jRussia/i  peasantry  does  not  exceed 
from  one  to  t%vo  hundred.  Even  the  Kirghcez  notnads,  with 
their  wonderful  memory,  foresight,  imagination,  and  shifti- 
ness, stand  on  afar  hii:;her  level  than  our  Russian  peas- 
antry.'' ^  Over  against  these  "  country  louts  "  stand  the  Jews 
with  wits  sharpened  by  necessity  and  appetites  whetted  by 
gnawing  hunger  —  "like  ravenous  wolves  beside  appetizing 
sheep,"  as  an  official  organ  once  described  them.  And  the 
Russian  (Government  is  engaged  in  solving  the  i)roblem  how 
to  keep  them  together  in  a  state  of  semi-star\^ation  without 
a  catastrophe,  blinding  the  wolves  is  the  latest  solution 
that  seems  to  have  suggested  itself,  and,  on  the  principle 
of  self-prescr\ation,  why,  it  may  be  asked,  should  Russian 
statesmen  not  give  it  a  trial  ? 

Naturally,  much  more  is  hereby  implied  than  deprivation 


have  only  come  on  a  visit.  A  ferv  has  only  to  buy  a  glass  of  vodka  and 
promise  a  trifle  besides,  and  for  this  Russian  peasants  zvill,  almost  without 
exception,  lie  when  questioned  in  a  court  of  justice — ay,  lie  in  the  most 
affronting  7vay  conceivable,  even  though,  as  is  often  the  case,  they  are  giving 
evidence  upon  oath."  —  Novoye  Vreniya,  4th  April,  1890.  None  of  the  con- 
flicting conclusions  wliich  can  be  drawn  from  this  unanswerable  and  lamen- 
table fact  are  of  good  omen  for  the  speedy  settlement  of  the  Jewish  question 
in  Russia. 

1  Oraschdanin,  19th  January,  1890.  Cf.  also  Novosti,  20th  January,  1890. 
An  linglish  Russophile  organ  which  might  possibly  render  some  services  to 
its  Tsar  by  courageous  honesty  which  it  can  never  effect  by  mere  coarse 
flattery,  a  tort  et  a  travers,  recently  alluding  to  a  former  paper  of  this  series, 
the  statements  of  which  it  completely  garbles,  seriously  puts  forward  the 
following  argument:  If  the  Russian  people  are  such  ignorant,  shiftless  loons 
as  they  are  represented  to  be,  they  are  solely  in  need  of  an  autocratic 
government  that  will  protect  them  against  their  own  instincts;  if  they  are 
enlightened,  moral,  well-behaved,  autocracy  is  lil<ewise  the  best  government 
for  them,  for  they  would  otherwise  have  long  ago  cried  out  against  its 
existence.  "  If  the  books  are  in  accordance  with  the  teachings  of  the 
Koran,"  said  the  fanatic  Caliph,  of  the  Alexandrian  library,  "  they  are  need- 
less, and  must  be  burned  :  it  opposed  to  the  Koran,  tliey  arc  heretical,  and 
must  be  destroyed  forthwith."  The  accusation  brought  against  tlie  Russian 
Government,  and  demonstrated  by  unanswerable  facts,  is  that  they  are 
deliberately  demoralizing  the  wretched  people  in  order  to  perpetuate  the 
chaotic  misrule  on  which  they  are  thriving.  What  would  any  honest,  un- 
prejudiced Englishman  say  to  the  following  candid  avowal  of  the  Govern- 
ment's programme,  made  by  the  aristocratic  organ  subsidized  by  the 
Government:  "The  Russian  peasant  possesses  ^;r(7/ /07w/;f  of  endurance 
and  remarkable  patience.  And  these,  in  sum,  are  the  qualities  of  the  Russian 
■which  should  form  the  basis  of  the  relations  of  persons  in  authority  to  the 
peasants;  and  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  authorities  have  to  deal  with  a 
soil  very  favorable  if  it  is  only  ploughed  and  harrowed  intelligently:'  — 
Graschdanin,  2nd  January,  1890.  If  this  be  not  Macchiavellism,  its  defence 
in  an  English  periodical  is  disinterested  love  of  the  good,  the  beautiful,  and 
the  true. 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  IQI 

of  mere*  lay  instruction.  The  Talmudic  religion,  whatever 
else  may  be  said  about  it,  is  in  itself  a  course  of  mental 
training  capable  of  rendering  the  mental  powers  as  supple 
and  sharp  as  would  a  course  of  mathematics  or  of  German 
metaphysics.  And  as  long  as  a  Jew  is  allowed  to  remain 
a  Jew  he  will  continue  to  be  infinitely  better  equipped 
for  the  battle  of  life  than  the  best  of  his  Russian  competi- 
tors. Hence  the  natural  desire  of  the  more  far-seeing 
among  the  Russian  politicians  to  extirpate  Judaism,  root 
and  branch;  hence  the  feverish  efforts  now  being  made  to 
realize  that  scheme  by  employing  every  known  form  of 
injustice  and  violence  that  stops  short  of  death. 

Every  sordid  motive  that  a  legislator  well  versed  in  this 
lower  branch  of  his  profession  could  suggest  is  put  before 
the  Jew  to  induce  him  to  abandon  the  faith  of  his  fore- 
fathers, without  replacing  it  by  anything  better.  Privileges 
denied  his  brethren,  money  and  its  various  equivalents, 
even  the  hope  of  unlawful  plunder,  have  been  deliberately 
relied  upon  by  these  champions  of  Christianity  to  tempt 
the  Hebrew  to  please  his  Emperor  by  denying  his  God. 
Imagine  one  of  those  lean,  cadaverous  caricatures  of 
humanity  who  crowd  the  cities  of  the  Pale,  and  whose 
existence  under  the  actual  circumstances  is  a  stronger 
argument  against  Russian  Christianity  than  any  that  could 
be  drawn  from  the  writings  of  Strauss  or  Huxley;  and  sup- 
pose that  accident  or  design  puts  it  in  his  power  to  defraud 
a  wealthy  co-religionist,  by  abuse  of  confidence,  fraud,  or 
downright  robbery.  He  succumbs  to  the  temptation, 
beggars  his  brother,  and  immediately  becomes  a  member 
of  the  orthodox  Church,  as  a  sort  of  corollary.  His  victim 
prosecutes  him  and  summons  a  cloud  of  credible,  respect- 
able witnesses  who  can  prove  the  charge  to  the  satisfaction 
of  the  most  sceptical.  He,  on  his  side,  suborns  two  or 
three  abandoned  Christian  wretches,  whose  life  is  one 
coarse  libel  on  Christianity.  The*  case  comes  on  for  trial, 
and  the  Russian  courts,  guided  by  Article  330  of  the  Tenth 
Volume  of  Laws,  will  refuse  to  allow  the  Jewish  witnesses 
to  depose  against  the  defendant,  because  they  are  natu- 
rally supposed  to  bear  a  grudge  against  an  apostate;  and  the 
light-hearted  perjury  of  the-  orthodox  Christians  (which 
costs,  as  we  have  seen,  but  a  small  measure  of  vodka)  sets 
the  seal  of  legality  on  crimes  that  would  send  their  author 
into  penal  servitude  in  England.  Of  course,  there  is  one 
way  out  of  the  difficulty :  the  plaintiff  may  go  to  work  and 


192  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

bribe  his  witnesses  to  commit  perjury  too,  i.e.,  to  embrace 
Christianity,  which  they  hate,  and  then  their  testimony 
will  be  received  with  credence  and  respect.  For  when  a 
Jew  finds  the  truth,  supposing  that  truth  to  be  the  "ortho- 
dox "  faith,  he  is  caressed  and  made  much  of  for  the  time 
being;  the  law  requires  "that  he  be  baptised  only  in  a  city 
church,  and  on  a  Sunday  or  festival,  and  with  all  possible 
pomp  and  ceremony."  '  If  he  be  married  he  must  either 
divorce  his  wife  or  compel  her  too  to  subordinate  her 
religious  convictions  to  her  conjugal  affection;  and  if  she 
refuses  to  become  a  Christian,  neither  herself  nor  her 
Christian  husband  will  be  permitted  to  leave  the  Pale.^ 
Finally,  in  order  to  contribute  to  the  sacredness  of  the 
family,  which,  Russians  com])lain,  is  lacking  among  the 
Jews,  the  new  laws  give  a  Jewish  boy  or  girl  the  right  and 
the  encouragement  to  abandon  the  faith  of  his  fathers  with- 
out consulting  his  parents.^  The  difficulties  thrown  in  the 
way  of  opening  synagogues  and  prayer-houses  are  as  nu- 
merous and  as  prohibitive  as  those  which  have  been  so 
effectually  opposed  to  opening  of  schools,  and  the  Rabbis 
of  those  that  already  exist  are  harassed  and  persecuted  till 
they  resign  or  go  over  to  the  enemy.  In  one  place  the 
ministry  refuses  to  confirm  the  election  of  a  respected 
Rabbi,  conducted  in  strict  accordance  with  all  the  laws  and 
regulations,  simply  because,  penetrated  with  a  deep  sense 
of  his  moral  responsibility,  he  refuses  to  prostitute  a  reli- 
gious office  to  the  desires  of  political  Chauvinists,  and  they 
unceremoniously  put  in  his  place  an  upstart  who  was  not 
disliked  only  by  those  who  did  not  know  him.  The  Jews 
of  Yekaterinburg,  who  had  lived  there  for  generations, 
summoned  up  courage  once  to  ask  permission  to  have,  not 
a  synagogue,  but  merely  a  house  of  prayer.^     The  Govern- 

1  Supplement  to  art.  76  (section  5). 

2  Complete  Coll.  of  Laws,  voJ.  x.,  part  i.,  art.  81. 

3  Ibid.,  section  3. 

4  The  abject  fear  which  the  Jews  have  of  displeasing  the  authorities 
exceeds  belief.  Take,  for  instance,  a  man  in  the  position  of  Baron  Gins- 
burg,  of  St.  Petersburg,  a  millionnaire  and  a  baron  of  tlie  Russian  empire, 
who  might  well  venture  to  undertake  much  that  is  forbidden  to  his  poorer 
brethren ;  and  yet  he  is  mortally  afraid  of  saying,  or  doing,  or  leaving  un- 
said and  undone  anything  that  might  possibly  offend  even  a  petty  Russian 
official.  He  dares  not  speak  even  in  favor  of  the  Russian  Government, 
lest  that  should  seem  an  attempt  on  his  part  to  patronize ;  and  he  would  as 
soon  cut  his  tongue  out  as  say  a  word  against  it.  A  few  years  ago  he  caused 
all  the  Russian  laws  concerning  the  Jews  to  be  printed  in  one  volume  at 
his  expense;  but  when  the  work  was  done  he  reflected  that  his  motives 
might  be  misinterpreted,  so  he  withdrew  it  from  circulation ;    and  no  en- 


THE    JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  I93 

ment,  in  reply,  very  quickly  discovered  a  long  forgotten 
ukase,  which  absolutely  forbids  Jews  to  reside  in  that  city, 
or  in  any  part  of  the  Ural,  and  they  are  now  about  to  be 
dragged  thousands  of  miles  to  the  Pale,  which  many  of 
them  have  never  seen  before.  In  the  village  of  Kakhovka 
the  Hebrew  community  was  lately  summoned  to  appear 
before  the  new  police  superintendent,  who  at  once  informed 
them  that  he  had  orders  to  close  up  and  seal  their  prayer- 
house,  and  to  bring  them  up  to  trial  for  having  four  years 
ago  opened  one,  "and  for  having  frequently  prayed  therein," 
without  being  authorized  to  do  so  by  the  (Government. 

These  are  some  of  the  measures  which  have  driven 
thousands  of  Jews  to  apostatize;  and  one  reads  very  fre- 
quently in  the  Russian  newspapers  of  "sixty  young  Jews 
who,  desirous  of  entering  the  university,  have  abjured  the 
Law  of  Moses";  of  forty  others  who  became  Christians 
because  their  business  called  them  outside  of  the  Pale,  and 
scores  of  others  who  for  equally  valid  reasons  are  intro- 
duced every  month  into  the  true  fold,  where  they  are  as 
much  in  their  place  as  eagles  in  a  barnyard.  Any  one  of 
the  measures  employed  against  the  Jews  would  be  enough 
to  "convert"  three-fourths  of  the  Christians  of  Russia  to 
Shamanism  or  Buddhism  in  a  week;  and  the  circumstances 
that  about  six  million  persecuted  and  miserable  wretches 
remain  steadfastly  faithful  to  a  religion  that  causes  their 
life  to  be  changed  into  a  fiery  furnace  without  the  angel  to 
keep  it  cool,  is  the  nearest  approach  to  a  grandiose  miracle 
that  has  been  vouchsafed  to  this  unbelieving  generation. 
The  Orthodox  Church  cannot  be  congratulated  on  these 
wedding  guests  whom  it  is  daily  picking  up  in  the  high- 
ways and  byways,  and  bidding,  or  rather  driving,  into  the 
spiritual  banqueting  hall.  Not  only  is  one  prepared  for 
the  discovery  that  they  are  not  provided  with  the  indis- 
pensable wedding  garment,  but  one  cannot  affect  surprise 
to  learn  that  such  raiment  as  they  have  is  swarming  with 
disease  germs  which  will  do  dire  execution  on  the  assembled 
guests.  I  have  conversed  with  numbers  of  "converted" 
Jews  of  all  classes  of  society,  and  I  can  affirm  that,  with 
few  exceptions,  not  only  have  they  not  the  faintest  glim- 
mer of  faith  in  Christianity,  but  they  hate  the  very  name, 

treaties  on  the  part  of  his  own  intimate  friends  could  persuade  him  to 
give  away  one  of  the  thousands  of  copies  that  were  lying  on  the  shelves  of 
his  library.  In  Odessa,  where  the  governor  is  Judophobe  and  ITlQre,  a  Jesy 
>YJU  soon  b?  afraJ4  to  sneege  in  the  street, 


194  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

despise  its  priests,  sneer  at  its  ceremonies,  and  loathe 
themselves  for  perjuring  their  souls  by  receiving  its  sacra- 
ments and  praising  the  name  of  its  founder.  And  they 
bring  up  their  sons  and  daughters  in  the  same  sentiments. 
I  know  a  respectable  family  in  Moscow,  the  father  of  which 
was  "converted"  like  thousands  of  his  co-religionists,  and 
1  can  answer  for  it  that  not  one  of  his  sons  or  daughters  had 
a  shred  of  belief  in  God  or  devil,  their  religious  faith 
being  summed  up  in  the  one  conviction  that  the  Orthodox 
Church  is  deserving  of  the  intense  hatred  of  every  honest 
man  and  woman,  and  that  no  opportunity  should  ever  be 
missed  of  contributing  to  its  ruin. 

Some  of  these  "  converts  "  repent  of  what  they  have  done, 
secretly  do  penance  for  their  sins,  and  return  to  the  syna- 
gogue. But  their  sighs  and  tears  are  as  unavailing  as  those 
of  their  forefathers  who,  sitting  down  by  the  waters  of 
Babylon,  wept  as  they  remembered  Sion ;  no  Rabbi  would 
dare  give  them  help  or  advice,  much  less  admission  to  the 
community;  he  would  forfeit  his  position  if  he  did.  One 
of  these  poor  wretches,  Fichtenstein  by  name,  a  venerable 
old  man  of  sixty,  was  induced  in  a  moment  of  weakness  to 
"embrace  Christianity,"  for  which  he  afterwards  did  pen- 
ance, literally  in  sackcloth  and  ashes.  He  visited  the 
synagogue  as  often  as  he  could,  where  his  fervent,  tearful 
prayers  attracted  the  attention  of  the  congregation.  The 
authorities  set  a  watch  on  his  movements,  acquired  the 
conviction  that  he  did  really  pray  in  the  Jewish  place  of 
worship,  and  had  him  straightway  arrested  and  sent  for  trial. 
The  example  of  these  men,  it  is  complained,  does  not  tend 
to  raise  the  moral  level  of  the  Russian  Church;  "they  scat- 
ter the  seeds  of  infidelity  and  insubordination  —  religious, 
political,  and  social  —  broadcast  throughout  the  country," 
say  the  astonished  spiritual  and  civil  authorities,  "and  the 
harm  thus  done  is  incalculable."  Harm  it  may  be;  incal- 
culable, however,  it  certainly  is  not.  The  Jews  may  all  of 
them  in  time  be  brought  to  "  embrace  Russian  Christianity," 
as  the  Moorish  chieftain  Almanzor  embraced  his  Christian 
enemies;  and  in  both  cases  the  embrace  is  pestilential, 
deadly. 

But  the  written  laws  against  the  Jews,  severe  as  they 
undoubtedly  are,  can  give  no  idea  of  the  actual  amount 
and  kind  of  suffering  in/licted  on  this  unfortunate  people 
by  those  who  administer  them,  and  from  whose  interpre- 
tation and  conduct  there  lies  no  appeal.     Not  only  must 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  I9S 

one  take  into  consideration  the  kind  of  whip  with  which 
they  are  beaten,  but  likewise  the  arm  that  wields  it;  and 
in  this  case  it  is  the  sinewy,  bloody  arm  that  knouted  so 
many  Christians  to  death.  For  some  officials  the  Jews  exist 
as  a  fertile  source  of  revenue  —  a  godsend  to  be  grateful 
for  —  the  bribes  they  are  compelled  annually  to  pay  exceed- 
ing by  a  large  amount  the  total  of  their  double  annual  taxes. 
This  state  of  things  reminds  one  of  our  own  Henry  III. 
pledging  all  the  Jews  of  his  kingdom  to  his  brother  for  the 
loan  of  a  considerable  sum  of  money,  authorizing  him  in 
return  to  keep  them  in  his  power  until  they  paid  the  debt 
to  the  last  farthing.  Russia's  solution  of  the  Jewish  prob- 
lem has  not  advanced  beyond  that  stage  yet.  Here  is  what 
one  of  the  most  trustworthy  and  impartial  newspapers  of 
Russia  has  to  say  on  the  subject:  — 

"The  restrictions  laid  upon  the  Jews  serve  in  reality  as  an  unfailing 
and  inexhaustible  source  of  income  to  the  authorities  charged  with  their 
execution;  all  those  Jews  whose  rights  are  more  or  less  doubtful  man- 
age to  get  them  changed  into  undoubted  rights  by  the  payment  of  unin- 
terrupted blackmail;  battues  and  domiciliary  visits,  which  assume  the 
most  improbable  forms,  also  wind  up  with  a  money  tribute.  Thus  on  a 
dark  night,  when  profound  silence  reigns  everywhere — usually  a  Friday 
night  is  chosen,  when  every  Jew  is  at  home — suddenly  the  Jewish  quar- 
ter of  the  city  is  surrounded  by  a  cordon,  and  a  great  multitude  of  peo- 
ple, men,  women,  and  children,  old  men — nay,  often  even  the  sick — 
are  arrested  and  packed  off  to  the  police  station;  here,  for  lack  of 
room,  they  are  kept  all  night  in  the  courtyard  in  the  open  air,  no  mat- 
ter how  severe  the  cold  may  be,  no  matter  how  inclement  the  weather. 
These  are  facts."  ^ 

And  facts,  I  may  add,  that  are  related  not  of  last  century, 
nor  last  year,  but  last  winter. 

This  hunting  of  Jews  who  are  living  where  they  have  no 
right  to  reside,  whose  passports  have  expired,  who  have 
transacted  some  business  which  their  faith  disqualifies  them 
from  transacting,  or  who  are  working  hard  to  keep  body 
and  soul  together  in  a  position  which  they  are  not  allowed 
to  occupy,  has  now  become  an  everyday  occurrence,  that 
no  longer  excites  surprise  and  seldom  even  evokes  compas- 
sion. The  newspapers  chronicle  these  things  with  as  per- 
fect indifference  as  a  huxter's  change  of  residence.  "The 
authorities  have  ordered  the  assistant  notaries  who  belong 
to  the  Hebrew  persuasion  to  be  immediately  dismissed  from 
their  situations  in  Kovno,"  says  the  Warsaw   Courier,  and 


I  The  Week,  7th  September,  1890. 


196  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

people  read  and  pass  on  phlegmatically  to  the  next  item  of 
intelligence.  "M.  Akimoff,  the  President  of  the  Divisional 
Court,"  says  another  paper," has  informed  all  notaries  that 
they  must  dismiss  their  clerks  who  are  members  of  the  Jew- 
ish communion,  and  fill  up  their  places  with  Russians."^ 
And  people  yawn  and  read  on. 

The  suffering  inflicted  by  this  wholesale  proscription  of 
the  Jews  is  intensified  a  hundred-fold  by  the  wantonly  sav- 
age manner  in  which  it  is  carried  out,  the  victims  being 
treated  in  many  cases  exactly  as  if,  instead  of  human  beings, 
they  were  brute  beasts,  who  might  be  chased  without 
impropriety  in  the  fields  and  highways,  and  tied  up  in  an 
outhouse,  when  caught,  till  they  could  be  conveniently 
whipped  or  physicked.  The  following  incident  will  illus- 
trate my  meaning:  A  considerable  number  of  Jews  repair 
every  year  from  various  parts  of  Russia  to  the  Liman  in 
Odessa,  to  test  the  medicinal  virtue  of  the  waters,  which 
are  strongly  recommended  by  Russian  doctors  in  cases  of 
rheumatism,  gout,  scrofula,  skin  diseases,  paralysis,  etc. 
Numerous  petitions,  stamped  with  revenue  stamps,  certifi- 
cates, and  documents  of  all  kinds  have  to  be  drawn  up, 
presented,  and  verified  before  a  Jew  can  receive  his  double 
passport  and  permission  to  pass  a  few  weeks  at  the  waters 
of  the  I,iman.  And  when  he  has  passed  through  this  weari- 
some and  expensive  ordeal  and  has  begun  the  cure,  he  is 
not  even  then  free  from  persecution.  He  or  she  may,  at 
any  time  of  the  day  or  night,  be  ]-)Ounced  upon  by  the 
])olice,  snatched  uj),  ladies  as  well  as  men,  and  ignomini- 
ously  subjected  to  a  medical  examination  and  ])ronounced 
impostors  who  are  at  the  waters  under  false  pretences,  hav- 
ing none  of  the  disorders  which  the  latter  are  supposed  to 
cure.  No  farther  back  than- the  month  of  July,  the  Jewish 
ladies  and  gentlemen  who  were  using  the  waters  of  the 
Andreieff  Liman  in  Odessa,  were  thus  unceremoniously 
arrested  one  day  —  night  is  usually  the  favorite  time  for 
arrests,  domiciliary  visits,  etc.,  in  Russia  —  and  marched 
off  to  the  city  doctor,  who  was  commanded  to  examine  them 
thoroughly,  and  to  find  out  whether  they  were  really  suffer- 
ing from  the  diseases  for  which  they  were  being  treated,  or 
had  merely  come  for  their  pleasure!  It  is  no  easy  matter 
even  for  a  physician  to  decide  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye, 
so  to  say,  whether  a  man  has  or  has  not  rheumatism,  gout, 

1  Odesfff  /V(m,  October,  1886, 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  1 97 

tic,  scrofula,  etc.,  etc.  The  Odessa  doctor,  however,  knew 
exactly  what  was  required  of  him,  and  justified  the  confi- 
dence with  which  he  was  honored :  he  declared  that  two- 
thirds  of  the  entire  number  of  Jews  were  in  good  health 
and  had  no  need  of  the  Liman  waters.  Even  if  this  were 
demonstrably  true,  the  services  of  these  persons  might  be 
desirable  or  even  indispensable  to  their  invalid  relatives, 
and  on  this  ground  their  presence  might  have  been  toler- 
ated; but  the  authorities  sent  them  home  at  once.^ 

It  is  no  light  matter  for  the  Jews,  who,  after  all,  are  mere 
human  beings,  to  make  a  stand  against  a  powerful  govern- 
ment which  is  mobilizing  its  numerous  army  of  ofificials, 
employing  all  its  pecuniary  resources,  and  all  the  ingenuity 
of  human  hate  to  crush  them  out  of  existence.  Still  they 
cannot  —  on  the  whole  —  be  accused  of  not  doing  their  best 
to  dispute  every  inch  of  ground,  of  not  struggling  for  some 
few  of  the  rights  of  men,  when  possible,  on  a  strictly  legal 
basis.  No  losing  game  —  with  stakes  so  high  —  was  ever 
yet  played  with  such  unfaltering  spirit.  No  fox  hotly  pur- 
sued by  eager  hounds  and  joyful  huntsmen  ever  employed 
more  profound  cunning,  more  suppleness,  more  talent  for 
adapting,  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  all  the  rapidly  chang- 
ing circumstances  of  time,  place,  and  persons  to  the  main 
end  in  view,  than  the  Jews.  The  tragic-comic  element 
that  results  from  this  pitting  of  intellect  against  brute  force, 
the  adventures,  curious  escapes,  the  plots  and  counterplots, 
would,  if  properly  treated,  make  a  most  entertaining  vol- 
ume—  but  entertaining  as  were  the  jokes  and  puns  and 
witty  remarks  made  at  the  gladiator  fights  in  Rome,  and 
which  drew  their  point  from  their  contrast  to  the  human 
being  grimly  fighting  on  the  threshold  of  eternity,  to  pro- 
long for  a  few  minutes  the  brutal  pleasure  of  a  jaded  rabble. 

The  laws  that  regulate  the  military  service  of  the  Jews 
are  characterized  by  their  Draconian  severity.  Most  of 
the  alleviations  and  privileges  accorded  to  Christians,  and 
which  tend  so  visibly  to  promote  good  feeling  between  the 
men  and  their  superiors,  are  inexorably  denied  them,  and 
the  hardships  inseparable  from  life  in  the  barracks,  with 
its  long  winter  night-watches  and  exhausting  summer  ma- 
noeuvres, are  needlessly  made  unendurable  to  the  soldier 
who  keeps  holy  the  Sabbath.  A  Jew  can  never  become  an 
officer  as  a  Christian  can  —  nay,   as  even  a  Mohammedan 

1  Novoye  Vremya,  23rd  July,  1890. 


19B 


RUSSlAlsr    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 


cnn,  who  is  not  disciualified  from  the  highest  position  in 
the  military  hierarchy,  filling  offices  of  trust  and  responsi- 
bility. This  is  a  remarkable  —  it  seems  an  imjust  —  re- 
striction; but  the  Jew,  hardened  by  use  and  want,  is 
prepared  for  it.  I'ut  why  go  still  further  and  allow  every 
soldier  who  calls  himself  a  Christian,  a  Mohammedan,  or  a 
Buddhist  to  lord  it  over  him,  and  not  only  hector  and 
bully,  but  assault  him  with  absolute  im]iunity,  sometimes 
with  direct  approbation?  The  paralyzing  fear  of  encoun- 
tering these  untold  miseries  of  soldier  life,  from  which 
the  only  escape  is  suicide,  accounts  for  the  deep-rooted 
aversion  which  many  Jews  manifest  to  don  the  livery  of 
the  Tsar,  and  the  desperate  attemi)ts  they  make  to  escape 
from  serving  in  the  army.  Hundreds  of  mothers  secretly 
leave  their  native  places  before  the  birth  of  their  children, 
which,  when  the  children  are  boys,  they  refuse  to  register, 
thus  placing  their  innocent  offspring,  almost  from  the 
moment  of  its  birth,  in  a  position  bristling  wnth  still  greater 
difficulties,  with  more  terrible  hardshi]:)s  than  the  one  they 
so  greatly  dread. ^ 

It  is  impossible  for  a  Jew  to  do  anything  in  a  simple, 
straightforward  manner.  He  could  not  even  if  he  would ; 
he  sets  to  work  to  carry  out  the  most  commoni^lace  and 
lawful  business  transaction  just  as  if  his  negotiations  were 
but  a  blind  to  mask  some  hidden  design,  the  nature  of 
which  you  have  no  means  of  guessing — it  may  be  to  rob 
you,  it  may  be  to  murder  you.  All  his  dealings  are  fenced 
and  hedged  round  with  so  many  provisos  and  conditions, 
and  contingent  obligations,  that  a  very  experienced  lawyer 
would  have  no  light  task  if  he  w-ere  set  to  unravel  the  web. 
The  following  is  a  very  typical  instance  of  the  trouble  taken 
by  Jews  to  wrest  to  their  own  benefit  one  of  the  laws  framed 
for  their  ruin.  Intending  to  conclude  a  business  arrange- 
ment, whatever  its  nature  may  be,  the  validity  of  which 
may  hereafter  be  called  in  (juestion  by  the  other  party  to 
the  contract,  a  Jew  first  makes  a  pretence  of  lending  him 
some  costly  furniture  or  delivering  valuable  goods  —  which 
he  himself  never  had  to  give  or  lend  —  and  then  sues  him 

1  "  My  attention  was  drawn  to  the  strange  fact  of  the  virtual  cessation  of 
male  births  among  the  Jews,  as  if  by  common  accord  all  Jewish  women  had 
resolved  to  put  an  end  to  the  tribe'  of  Israel.  From  private  sources,  how- 
ever, I  learned  that  things  were  pretty  much  as  they  had  always  been,  .  .  . 
but  that  the  far-seeing,  provident  parents  refused  to  register  their  births,  in 
order  to  free  them  from  the  necessity,  many  years  thence,  of  serving  in  the 
army."—  The  I'llna  Messenger,  nth  December,  1887. 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  1 99 

for  the  value.  The  case  comes  on  for  trial  (the  Russian 
law  courts  are  literally  clogged  with  such  fictitious  lawsuits, 
which  prevent  the  hearing  of  really  important  actions); 
both  parties  are  heard  with  all  the  conscious  seriousness  and 
dignified  leisure  which  beseems  a  Russian  judge.  The 
defendant  seems  to  make  a  determined  stand,  but  loses  his 
case  and  is  condemned  to  pay  the  sum  demanded.  Now 
this  is  exactly  the  sum  that  would  represent  the  plaintiff's 
loss,  if  at  any  future  time  the  defendant  should  call  in 
question  the  validity  of  the  contract  which  they  have  not 
yet  concluded.  He  would  then  claim  a  writ  of  execution 
to  recover  the  sum  adjudged  him  by  the  court. ^ 

Formerly  a  Jew  could  lend  money  on  landed  securities. 
Now  this  is  absolutely  forbidden;  so,  before  advancing  the 
sum  demanded,  he  requires  the  borrower  to  give  him  a  note 
of  hand  for  the  capital  and  the  interest  combined,  he  next 
sues  him  for  the  amount,  and  when  judgment  is  given  in 
his  favor,  advances  the  sum  of  money  required.  Or,  sup- 
pose a  merchant  or  petty  trader  has  business  in  some  town 
or  city  which  his  quality  of  Jew  precludes  him  from  visit- 
ing. If  he  petitions  the  authorities  to  allow  him  to  go 
there  and  spend  a  week  or  a  fortnight,  he  is  insulted  for 
his  pains.  Instead  of  this,  however,  two  of  his  friends  or 
dependents  quarrel  and  summon  him  to  give  evidence  before 
the  local  magistrate,  which  he  does;  but  one  of  the  parties 
appeals  to  the  higher  court,  which  sits  in  the  city  he  is  so 
desirous  of  visiting,  and  he  is  again  called  upon  to  give 
evidence,  this  time  on  oath.  This  also  he  does,  if  it  is  a 
criminal  prosecution,  as  it  probably  would  be,  at  the  cost 
of  the  crown.  One  of  the  litigants  is  perhaps  condemned, 
but  the  prosecutor  thereupon  generously  forgives  him,  and 
all  parties  are  satisfied.  The  law  courts  of  the  west  of 
Russia  are  positively  brought  to  a  standstill  by  the  over- 
whelming number  of  fictitious  actions  of  this  kind  entered 
by  Jews,  who  thus  compel  the  imperial  judges  to  spend 
their  time  and  labor  and  the  resources  of  the  State  in  assist- 
ing the  Jewish  community  to  evade  the  very  laws  which 
they  are  sworn  to  administer.-  A  more  ludicrous  sight  was 
never  witnessed  in  the  law  courts  of  modern  times.  "  Lately 
the  local  authorities,"  a  Kieff  journal  amiounces, 


1  Novoye  Vremya,  24th  December,  1889.  These  artifices  are  rendered 
possible  by  tlie  important  ciicumstance  that  in  Russia  law  is  not  costly,  and 
a  man  can  and  generally  does  conduct  his  own  case,  even  if  he  is  unable  to 
read  or  write. 

-  Novoye  Vremya,  24th  December,  1890. 


200  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

"  set  about  verifying  the  right  of  the  Jews  in  Shmerinka  to  reside  there. 
Many  of  them  were  living  in  Httle  huts  of  their  own.  Before  the  veri- 
fication took  place,  however,  many  of  tlie  resident  Hebrews  deemed  it 
advisable  to  flee.  There  are  several  hundred  Jewish  houses  there,  the 
majority  of  which  were  erected,  like  the  palaces  of  the  fairy  tales,  by 
night.  The  work  was  done  in  the  daytime  in  bits  and  scraps,  at  some 
distance  from  the  city,  and  when  ready  the  complete  house  would  be 
drawn  by  twenty  or  thirty  pairs  of  oxen,  and  set  up  in  the  place  destined 
for  it.  For  convenience'  sake  these  houses  were  made  to  move  about 
on  wheels."  ^ 

The  poverty  of  the  greater  part  of  the  six  million  Jews 
who  are  caged  up  in  the  few  plague-stricken  towns  and  vil- 
lages of  the  Tale  surpasses  that  which  excited  such  a  cry  of 
horror  in  London  when  the  sweating  system  and  its  results 
were  dragged  into  the  light  of  day.  The  late  Minister  of 
Finances,  Keutern,  declared  candidly  in  a  memoir  to  the 
Emperor,  that  "the  poverty  in  which  the  Jews  live  is  ex- 
treme, and  the  extraordinary  demoralization  of  the  Hebrew 
race  in  Russia  is  mainly  the  outcome  of  the  extremely 
unfavorable  conditions  in  which  they  are  placed  for  gain- 
ing a  livelihood."-  The  amount  of  taxes  which  they  owe 
is  enormous.^  It  was  shown  by  the  census  that  whereas 
the  average  proportion  of  Christians  to  the  total  number  of 
houses  owned  by  Christians  in  the  governments  of  the  Pale, 
is  between  410  and  510  persons  to  one  house,  the  average 
number  of  Jews  is  1,229.''  In  most  parts  of  the  Pale,  they 
are  cooped  up  like  insects  or  animals  rather  than  men.  In 
Berditscheff,  the  official  statistician  tells  us 

"  the  Jews  are  huddled  together  more  like  salted  herrings  than  human 
beings;  tens  of  thousands  of  them  are  devoid  of  any  constant  means  of 
subsistence,  living  from  hand  to  mouth;  several  families  are  often 
crowded  into  one  or  two  rooms  of  a  dilapidated  hut,  so  that  at  night 
there  is  absolutely  no  space  whatever  Ijctween  the  sleepers.  .  .  .  The 
lodgers  turn  these  rooms  into  workshops  in  the  daytime,  refining  wax 
therein,  making  tallow  candles,  tanning  leather,  etc.;  here  whole  fam- 
ilies live,  work,  sleep,  and  eat  together,  in  that  fetitl  atmosphere,  with 
their  tools  and  materials  lying  around  on  all  sides."  ^ 

The  Moscow  Gazette,  describing  the  state  of  the  Jews  in 
Berditscheff,  says:  — 

"The  streets  of  the  Jewish  quarter  of  the  town  are  not  more  than 
four  feet  wide;    on  either  side  of  them  the  tumble-down  old  houses 

1  Cf.  also  Novoye  Yremya,  loth  January,  1890. 

2  Cf.  Complete  Collection  of  T.aws,  vol.  xl.,  42264. 
8  Novoye  Vremya,  loth  January,  1890. 

■*  Shooravski  Statist.,  Description  of  the  Government  of  Kieff,  vol.  i.,  p. 
247. 
5  Ibid. 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  201 

seem  ready  to  fall  to  pieces;  children  are  lying  before  the  houses  on 
the  street  in  a  state  of  almost  complete  nudity,  wallowing  in  the  slough, 
and  among  them  numbers  of  slovenly  women  —  the  mothers  of  the 
children  —  also  stretched  out  sideways  and  lengthways  on  the  street, 
sleeping  under  the  rays  of  the  burning  sun." 

The  statistician,  M.  Bobrovski,  writing  on  the  condition 
of  the  Jews  in  the  government  of  Grodno,  says:  — 

"  By  far  the  greater  part  of  the  Jewish  population  are  poor  and  are 
always  engrossed  by  the  one  care  :  how  to  get  their  daily  bread.  Bur- 
dened with  numerous  families,  the  crowded  state  in  which  they  live 
surpasses  anything  one  can  conceive  as  possible.  Frequently  one  hut 
consisting  of  three  or  at  most  four  rooms  lodges  as  many  as  ttoelvc 
families,  whose  lives  are  an  unbroken  series  of  privations  and  pains. 
Whole  families  sometimes  live  on  three-quarters  of  a  pound  of  bread, 
one  salt  herring,  and  a  few  onions."  ^ 


'»» 


"In  the  Government  of  Kovno,"  —  and  in  every  govern- 
ment inhabited  by  the  Jews  —  "there  are  families  who 
never  break  their  fast  till  night,  and  then  only  if  the  father 
and  bread-winner  had  found  work  to  do  and  has  received 


his  wage 


)l  2 


This,  no  doubt,  is  very  unsavory  reading,  and  I  inflict  as 
little  of  it  upon  my  readers  as  will  barely  suffice  to  enable 
them  to  form  an  opinion  upon  the  Jewish  question  in 
Russia.  Russian  Judophobes  —  many  members  of  the 
Government  included — -positively  take  a  pleasure  in  these 
disgusting  things.  And  yet  what  the  object  of  all  this  per- 
secution is  —  beyond  the  one  I  have  already  suggested  — 
no  man  can  tell.  It  is  not  the  Jewish  religion  that  is  so 
unrelentingly  pursued,  for  it  is  admitted  even  by  the 
Orthodox  Church  to  be  superior  to  Mohammedanism, 
which  enjoys  toleration  in  Russia.  Neither  is  it  the  Jewish 
race,  for  once  a  Jew  adopts  Christianity  as  his  "faith,"  he 
is  placed  on  a  level  with  born  Christians.  It  cannot  be  the 
supposed  economical  influence  for  evil  exerted  by  the  Jews, 
for  the  same  evils  complained  of,  only  in  much  larger 
dimensions,  are  to  be  found  in  those  parts  of  the  Empire 
in  which  a  Jew  never  sets  foot.  And  yet,  objectless  as  this 
persecution  evidently  is  from  any  reasonable  point  of  view, 
not  only  is  it  warmly  advocated  by  a  portion  of  the  press, 
but  a  fiendish  delight  is  taken  in  contemplating  the  results. 
The  following  is  a  short  extract  from  a  description  of  Vilna, 


1  Description  of  the  Government  of  Grodno,  vol.  i.,  p.  858  and  fol. 

2  Afanassieff,  Description  of  the  Government  of  Kovno,  pp.  582,  583. 


202  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

publislied   in  the    Vilna  Mcssetiget;  a  Government  organ, 
and  quoted  with  relish  by  the  Novoye  Vremya:  — 

"  All  the  narratives  of  travellers  about  Asiatic  and  African  cities 
dwindle  down  to  the  level  of  the  commonplace  in  comparison  with  the 
sights  that  meet  your  eye  here;  even  the  glorious  city  of  Berditschefl, 
the  very  name  of  which  is  become  proverbial  as  a  synonym  for  dirt  and 
rottenness,  is  as  nothing  when  confronted  with  this  pearl.  .  .  .  Glance 
at  the  Jewish  Synagogue.  The  dirt  in  the  courtyard  is  indescribable, 
the  noise  and  tumult  like  unto  that  which  accompanieil  the  confusion 
of  tongues.  But  the  atmosphere?  You  shoukl  breatlie  it,  to  be  able  to 
conceive  what  it  is  like.  Beside  the  women's  wing  of  the  synagogue 
are  the  baths  in  which  the  sons  and  daughters  of  Israel  cleanse  their 
sinful  tk-sh.  You  can  judge  of  the  internal  tidiness  and  cleanliness  of 
these  baths  by  the  high  dunghill  carefully  heaped  up  besidt^  the  steps 
of  the  entrance.''  ^ 

But  the  rest  of  this  foul  essay  is,  at  least  in  parts,  too  filthy 
to  be  given  in  English.  Imagine  the  Nawab  of  Ikngal 
sneering  at  Mr.  Holwell  and  his  twenty-two  companions  for 
the  mephitic  atmosphere  of  the  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta, 
and  you  have  a  parallel  to  the  good  taste  and  the  humanity 
of  Russian  Judophobes. 

It  would  be  asking  for  a  miracle  to  expect  that  men  con- 
demned, as  are  the  Russian  Jews,  to  rot  away  in  forced 
idleness,  in  Augean  filth,  breathing  air  poisoned  by  the 
smell  of  untanned  leather,  and  charged  with  the  noisome 
exhalations  of  the  dead  and  dying,  to  be  clean,  or  even  to 
be  merely  dirty  in  the  ordinary  acceptation  of  the  word. 
What  a  harrowing  picture  of  their  life  does  not  the  follow- 
ing scene  conjure  up  —  one  of  the  most  pathetic  of  the 
tragi-comic  incidents  to  which  I  allude  above?  In  the 
middle  of  the  town  of  Berditschefl  there  is  a  large  channel 
or  sink  in  which  is  thrown  all  kinds  of  foul  unnamable 
filth.  One  day  it  occurred  to  a  police  superintendent  that 
he  might  ha\e  it  cleaned  out  gratis,  and  he  hit  upon  the 
following  happy  expedient:  Strolling  along  the  edge  of  this 
putrid  cesspool,  he  suddenly  stood  still  and  then  bent 
anxiously  over  the  brink,  stirring  up  the  filth  with  his  slick. 
A  crowd  of  Jews  soon  gathered  round  him,  and  incjuircd 
what  was  wrong.  He  replied  that  he  had  dropped  a  valu- 
able ring  worth  ^25  into  the  cloaca,  and  he  promised  a 
reward  to  the  finder.  "In  about  fifteen  minutes,"  says  the 
journal,  "all  this  putrescent  garbage  was  taken  out  in  hand- 
kerchiefs, buckets,  pots,  rags,  etc.,  and  brought  ho7ne  by  the 

1  Novoye  Vremya,  29th  August,  1888. 


The  jews  in  russia.  2O3 

Jews,  who  scrutinized  it  in  their  courtyards,  each  one  hope- 
ful of  finding  the  ring.  And  in  this  way,"  it  concludes, 
"the  superintendent  succeeded  in  cleansing  that  canal.'' 
What  extraordinary  notions  the  Russian  police  must  have 
of  the  meaning  of  the  word  sanitation! 

The  majority  of  the  other  charges  brought  against  the 
Jews  are  in  equal  good  taste.  In  fairness  to  both  parties, 
however,  it  must  be  admitted  that  from  one  fault  —  or  per- 
haps the  word  crime  would  more  accurately  connote  it  —  it 
would  be  difficult  to  exculpate  them;  and  this  partly  explains, 
if  it  does  not  justify,  the  indignation  of  the  Russian  Gov- 
ernment. I  allude  to  a  lack  of  ardor,  amounting  at  times 
to  a  positive  aversion  on  their  part,  to  risk  their  lives  in 
the  service  of  the  Tsar,  in  return  for  the  rights  and  pro- 
tection which  they  enjoy  in  Russia.  And  this,  in  spite  of 
the  solemn  oath  which  they  all  have  to  take,  "  in  all  things 
to  serve  and  obey  his  Imperial  Majesty,  not  sparing  in  his 
service  my  life-blood,  but  shedding  it,  ay,  to  the  last  drop,"  ^ 
in  defence  of  throne  and  beloved  fatherland.  This  may  be 
perjury  and  high  treason  combined,  but,  whatever  its  name 
and  degree,  many  Jews^  are  guilty  of  it.  And  if  that  be  a 
satisfactory  answer  to  the  charge  of  undue  harshness  brought 
against  the  Russian  Government,  there  is  an  end  to  the 
matter.  At  the  same  time  one  fails  to  understand  why  the 
Government,  which  taunts  the  Jews  with  being  cowards, 
takes  more  pains  to  draw  or  drive  them  into  the  Russian 
army  than  if  they  were  so  many  Hectors  and  Achilles.  Lest 
a  Jew  follow  what  is  supposed  to  be  the  bent  of  his  incli- 
nation and  shirk  his  "sacred  duty  to  his  Little  Father  the 
Tsar  and  his  dear  Fatherland,"  his  personal  appearance 
must  be  minutely  described  in  his  passport  in  much  greater 
detail  than  if  he  were  a  Christian.  Thus  every  pimple, 
mole,  malformation,  and  other  mark  by  which  he  may  be 
identified  is  to  be  clearly  mentioned !  ^  If  the  medical 
commission  declare  him  unfit  for  service,  and  the  authori- 
ties entertain  a  well-founded  or  absurd  suspicion  that  he 
himself  deliberately  contributed  to  bring  about  this  unfit- 
ness, he  is  received  into  the  army  in  spite  of  his  physical 
defects,  and  told  off  for  special  service.^      If,  when  called 

1  Supplement  to  Article  1061  (1886). 

■2  The  percentage  of  Jews  who  neglect  to  present  themselves  for  military 
service,  or  afterwards  desert,  is  larger  than  that  of  the  Christians ;  but  the 
difference  is  not  considerable. 

3  Military  Law  of  1886.     Explanation  of  Article  8. 

4  Explanation  of  Article  40. 


204  RUSSIAN    TRAITS   AND   TERRORS. 

upon,  a  Jew  fails  to  present  himself  to  the  military  com- 
mission whose  business  it  is  to  accept  or  reject  him,  he  is 
not  imprisoned,  for  this  would  be  no  punishment  to  a  man 
whose  life  is  a  crownless  martyrdom,  but  heavily  fined. 
This  may  be  a  just  and  certain  method  of  engrafting  that 
love  of  Fatherland  and  Little  Father  which  neither  their 
feelings  nor  their  reason  have  been  able  to  evoke,  but  it 
seems  needlessly  harsh  to  inflict  upon  the  hard-working 
old  parents  of  the  defaulter  a  fine  of  ^^50  besides;  and  this 
is  exactly  what  the  law  does.^  But  many  young  men  are 
orphans  at  this  age,  or  their  parents  are  literally  beggars, 
so  that,  not  jjossessing  a  copper  coin,  they  have  no  fear  of 
the  penalties.  Such  youths  ingeniously  turn  the  law  to 
account,  and  comjjcl  it  to  yield  them  and  their  relations  a 
slight  profit.  They  run  away  from  the  parish  or  city  in 
which  the  commission  holds  its  sittings,  and  are  declared 
fugitives.  For  all  such  deserters — if  only  they  be  Jews  — 
a  reward  of  fifty  roubles  is  always  liberally  paid.  A  friend 
of  the  runaway  is  informed  by  the  delintpient  himself  of 
his  whereabouts,  he  communicates  the  information  to  the 
authorities  and  receives  the  reward,  which  he  gives  in  part 
or  in  its  entirety  to  the  offender. 

In  this  manner  many  of  the  Russian  laws  against  the 
Jewish  population  either  defeat  their  own  purpose  or  inflict 
considerable  loss  upon  the  Christian  subjects  of  the  Tsar. 
Thus  there  are  numerous  districts  in  Russia  —  fertile 
stretches  of  land  which  are  in  sore  need  of  workmen  to 
till  the  soil  or  reap  its  fruits.  It  often  happens  that  the 
corn  rots  on  the  ground  for  want  of  hands  to  cut  it.  The 
landowners  have  been  for  years  crying  out  for  some  measure 
calculated  to  restore  what  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs 
deprived  them  of  —  cheap  labor;  and  the  Government  did 
enact  a  law  a  few  years  ago,  w^hich  has  created  a  class  of 
agricultural  laborers  who  sell  themselves  for  several  years, 
and  even  descend  to  the  heirs  of  their  master,  should  he 
die  before  the  expiration  of  their  term.  But  this  measure 
has  not  brought  the  looked-for  relief  to  Russian  landowners, 
who  are  often  driven  to  despair  at  the  sight  of  their  riches 
melting  away  like  snow  for  want  of  laborers,  while  the  mis- 
erable Jews  are  perishing  of  sheer  starvation,  almost  de- 
vouring each  other,  like  Ugolino's  offspring  in  the  tower  of 
the  Ciualandi,  because  there  is  no  work  for  them  to  do  in 


2  Article  350  of  the  Military  Law. 


THE    JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  205 

the  Pale.  These  hungry  wretches  are  then  accused  by  sleek, 
over-fed  ministers  in  their  warm  drawing-rooms,  of  a  dis- 
position to  outreach  the  Russian  peasant  whenever  they 
have  a  chance.  The  accusation,  it  is  to  be  feared,  is  not 
wholly  groundless,  for  Jews  belong  to  the  genus  animal  no 
less  than  to  the  species  man,  and  the  instinct  of  self-pre- 
servation is  as  strongly  developed  within  them  when  their 
rival  is  a  Russian  a.s  if  he  were  only  a  vile  Jew,  like  them- 
selves. Men  of  mild,  amiable  disposition,  tossed  about  in 
an  open  boat  on  the  ocean  for  a  week  or  ten  days,  and 
tortured  by  the  pangs  of  hunger  and  thirst,  have  even  been 
known  to  harbor  wicked  thoughts  of  cannibalism,  which 
the  children  of  Israel  in  Russia  have  not  yet  been  known  to 
entertain. 

I  am  personally  acquainted  with  a  rich  Jew  in  a  flourish- 
ing provincial  city  who  is  compelled  to  pay  in  bribes  to 
the  authorities  a  sum  that  would  support  half  the  Jews  of 
Berditscheff.  He  raises  the  necessary  amount  by  imposing 
an  illegal  supplementary  tax  on  all  kosher  food  sold  by  him 
to  his  co-religionists.  His  arrangements  with  the  police 
enable  him  not  only  to  do  this  with  impunity,  but  likewise 
to  have  all  his  competitors  removed  from  the  city  "admin- 
istratively," that  is,  by  an  order  issued  by  the  police,  with- 
out rhyme  or  reason.  These  "administrative"  orders  are 
much  more  demoralizing  than  the  lettres  de  cachet  of  the 
French  monarchy,  because  much  more  easily  obtained.  If 
a  Christian  have  an  obliging  friend  in  the  police  adminis- 
tration, he  can  treat  many  Jews  of  the  lower  classes  just 
as  if  they  were  serfs.  I  knew  a  respectable  young  girl  of 
very  honest  parents  privileged  to  live  in  one  of  the  capital 
cities.  A  Christian  "fell  in  love"  with  her,  and  under 
pretext  of  giving  her  "lessons  and  preparing  her  for  admis- 
sion to  one  of  the  high  schools,  seduced  her,  solemnly 
promising  marriage.  I  heard  her  once  ask  him  to  marry 
her,  and  I  also  heard  him  reply  that  he  would  have  her 
sent  out  of  the  city  in  twenty-four  hours  for  her  presump- 
tion. And  he  did.  A  cousin  of  his  is  serving  in  the  police 
department,  and  he  had  no  difficulty  to  obtain  an  order  for 
her  banishment  "as  a  disorderly  Jewess."  "But  how  could 
you  bring  yourself  to  do  such  a  damnable  act?  "  I  asked. 
"Oh,  she  is  only  a  Jewess,"  he  answered.  "What  else  is 
she  good  for.     Besides,  everybody  does  the  same."  ^ 

1  At  present  a  Jew  can  be  sent  out  of  the  city  on  the  ground  that  he  has 
t)cen  imfolite  in  the  street  or  in  a  crowd.    And  this  law  has  been  made  by 


206  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

Yes;  everybody  does  the  same,  and  the  lives  of  six  mil- 
lion people  whose  instincts,  a})titudes,  and  moral  sense 
place  them  on  a  much  higher  level  than  their  Christian 
fellow  subjects,  are  thus  made  literally  unendurable.  Scoffed 
at,  terrorized,  and  robbed  by  every  petty  official  with  that 
certain  impunity  which  invites  to  crime,  insulted,  beaten, 
and  kept  in  constant  fear  of  violence  by  a  vile  rabble  whom 
they  dare  not  irritate  by  even  a  slight  success  in  business 
or  trade  ;  held  up  to  the  scorn  and  indignation  of  all  Russia 
by  the  Governmental  press  as  the  authors  of  every  calamity 
avoidable  and  unavoidable;  ^  education  and  instruction 
denied  them,  the  learned  professions  and  higher  branch  of 
the  profession  of  arms  closed  to  them;  trade  and  com- 
merce rendered  very  difficult  by  intolerable  taxes  and  end- 
less restrictions,  and  wholly  impossible  without  bribery  and 
fraud;  their  personal  liberty  now  at  last  completely  taken 
away  from  them;  their  religion  proscribed,  and  their  very 
souls  killed  by  the  perjury  with  which  they  are  forced  to 
blacken  it,  Russian  Jews  may  well  defy  their  persecutors  to 
frame  any  further  laws  calculated  to  make  their  position 
worse  than  it  is. 

Surely  English  journalists  and  politicians  carried  distrust 
too  far  when  they  doubted  the  solemn  assurances  of  the 
Russian  Government  that  no  more  stringent  laws  were  in 
contemplation  at  present,  just  as  the  American  coroner's 
jury,  finding  a  paper  with  the  words,  "  I  have  killed  myself," 
on  the  corpse  of  an  inveterate  liar,  brought  in  a  verdict 
that  he  was  not  dead  at  all.  Still,  it  is  to  be  regretted  that 
the  monster  meeting  which  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London 
was  to  have  convened  was  not  held,  as  it  might  have  led  to 
some  beneficial  results;  not,  of  course,  by  passing  impotent 
resolutions  of  indignation,  which  would  have  had  as  much 
effect  on  the  Russian  Government  as  dewdrops  on  a  goose's 
back,  but  by  respectfully  petitioning  his  Imperial  Majesty 
—  as  a  daily  paper  lately  suggested  —  to  commute  in  his 


'  a  governor  whose  politeness  is  shown  by  kicks  and  cuffs  and  blasphemous 
oaths,  as  the  whole  south  of  Russia  is  well  aware. 

1  Cf.  Novoye  Vreniya,  which  published  a  long  article  at  the  time  of  the 
accident  to  the  Tsar's  train  at  Borki  to  show  that  the  danger  of  sudden  death 
had  been  brought  about  by  the  Jews,  while  his  escape  was  miraculous  and 
actually  foretold  by  one  of  the  minor  Hebrew  prophets,  who,  when  read 
aright,  mentions  him  by  name.  This  same  enlightened  organ,  the  most 
extensively  circulated  in  Russia,  also  countenanced  the  fable  that  the  Jews 
periodically  murder  a  Christian  child,  whose  blgod  they  require  for  their 
ceremonies. 


THE   JEWS    IN    RUSSIA.  20/ 

clemency  the  present  unbearable  sufferings  to  which  the  law 
condemns  six  millions  of  men  and  women  for  worshipping 
God  as  Christ  did  —  for  painless  death  by  electricity  or 
poison. 


208  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

RUSSIAN   FINANCE:     THE   RACKING   OF   THE   PEASANTRY. 

Since  the  halcyon  days  of  Controller  Calonne,  the  mirac- 
ulous transformer  of  bland  smiles  and  promises  into  ready 
money,  that,  like  Cinderella's  finery,  had  a  nasty  way  of 
reverting  after  a  brief  period  to  its  original  forms,  no 
country  would  seem  to  have  made  such  marvellous  financial 
progress  in  so  short  a  time  as  Russia,  under  the  guidance 
of  her  present  Minister  of  Finances,  M.  Vyshnegradsky. 
A  cursory  survey  of  the  chief  items  of  this  improvement 
would  probably  silence  the  majority  of  those  prejudiced 
politicians  who  are  ever  contemptuously  inquiring  —  as  the 
Jews  of  old  about  Nazareth  —  "Can  any  good  thing  come 
out  of  Russia?  "  The  wilful  pessimism  of  these  professional 
Russophobes  is  less  excusable  than  the  childish  optimism 
of  Slavonian  ])atriots  who,  with  Oriental  hyperbole,  com- 
placently dwell  on  the  unparalleled  prosperity  and  magna- 
nimity of  their  fatherland,  whose  gold,  they  allege,  pulled 
England  through  the  late  financial  crisis.^  The  means  by 
which  M.  Vyshnegradsky  raised  his  country's  credit  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world  were  neither  few  nor  simple.  He  natur- 
ally began  by  cutting  down  the  expenses  of  the  administra- 
tion as  low  as  was  consistent  with  his  own  tenure  of  ofifice; 
he  diligently  tapped  such  new  sources  of  revenue  as  sug- 
gested themselves  to  a  mind  ambitious  of  distinction  and 
fertile  in  resources;  he  raised  loans;  effected  conversions; 
collected  debts  that  seemed  hopeless;  and  literally  "scraped 
together"  every  available  rouble  in  the  country.  In  all 
this  human  ingenuity  was  admirably  seconded  by  chance, 
and  favorable  circumstance  improved  in  turn  by  clear 
insight  and  ready  resolve.    Two  abundant  harvests  changed 

1  In  the  semi-official  Novoye  Virmya,  for  instance,  we  read:  —  "In  by- 
gone times  the  Russian  Government  was  occasionally  subsidized  by  Eng- 
land, but  now  the  London  Exchange  is  saved  from  a  crisis  by  the  money  of 
the  Russian  Government.  Our  conduct  is  in  this  case  extremely  magnani- 
mous when  one  takes  into  consideration  the  nasty  tricks  played  by  the 
English  lixchange  in  1876-7,  in  order  to  undermine  PUr  credit," -^ /Vc'W/tf 
Vrem^a,  ggth  November,  1890. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  209 

his  gloomy  if  prudent  anticipation  of  a  small  deficit  into  a 
welcome  little  surplus,  and  his  own  skilful  manipulation 
and  extreme  munificence  towards  certain  bankers  struck 
off  the  golden  fetters  that  had  previously  bound  Russia  to 
Berlin,  thus  establishing  identity  of  French  and  Russian 
interests,  if  not  in  politics,  at  least  in  finance.  Some  idea 
of  the  extent  to  which  Russia  is  beholden  to  French  sym- 
pathy in  all  these  financial  achievements  may  be  gathered 
from  a  few  eloquent  figures.  The  Russian  loan  of  500 
million  francs  (22nd  December,  1888)  was  covered  two  and 
a  half  times  over  and  issued  at  448^;  that  of  700  millions 
(loth  April,  1889)  was  responded  to  by  an  offer  of  eight 
times  that  amount,  although  it  was  issued  at  448f ;  that  of 
1,242  millions  (sth  June,  1889)  likewise  elicited  an  offer 
of  eight  times  more  than  was  called  for,  and  was  issued  at 
457ij  while  the  last  loan  of  360  millions  (March,  1890) 
was,  to  use  the  expression  employed  by  Russian  papers, 
"gulped  down"  by  the  French  with  an  enthusiasm  scarcely 
surpassed  by  that  with  ivhich  they  invested  their  hard-earned 
savings  in  the  equally  promising  venture  of  the  Panama 
Canal. ^  Some  of  these  loans  were  quoted  at  96  a  month 
after  issue,  and  it  is  not  impossible  that  they  should  yet 
reach  par,  while  at  present  Russian  stock  stands  2  per  cent, 
higher  than  Austrian,  and  about  12  per  cent,  above  Hun- 
garian. 

Then,  again,  if  we  glance  hastily  at  the  rapid  develop- 
ment of  industrial  manufactures  in  the  empire,  we  are  lost 
in  astonishment  at  the  seemingly  miraculous  results  effected 
by  Protection.  Thus  the  chemical  works  in  the  country 
have  a  yearly  output  of  2^  millions  sterling,  as  against 
^450,000  in  1867 ;  Russian  tanneries  have  an  output  valued 
at  4^-  millions  sterling,  instead  of  the  i:^  million  of  twenty- 
three  years  ago;  the  value  of  woollen  manufactures  has 
increased  during  the  same  time  from  half  a  million  to  3 
millions;  in  a  word,  most  of  the  advantages  that  could  be 
reasonably  expected  to  accrue  to  the  country  from  the  policy 
of  encircling  Russia  with  the  Chinese  wall  of  a  commercial 
tariff  have  already  been  realized.  The  manufacturers  have 
wonderfully  prospered  under  the  system,  and  Russia  can 
now   significantly   point  to  a  class   of   merchant   princes 


1  When  the  last  Russian  loan  was  floated,  772  bonds  satisfied  the  wants 
of  all  British  capitalists  combined,  while  Frenchmen  demanded  over  5| 
piillions  of  them,  and  received  123,000. 


2IO  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

created  by  Protection;  men  who  equal,  possibly  surpass, 
the  historic  Chikls  of  London,  the  Coutts  of  lulinburgh, 
the  Blundells  of  Liverpool,  in  riches,  if  not  in  refinement; 
millionnaires  who  can  afford  to  give  themselves  the  exqui- 
site pleasure  of  employing  choice  champagnes  to  wash  their 
hands,  too  seldom  cleansed  with  vulgar  soap  and  water; 
who  can  pay  ^300  for -a  seat  in  the  theatre,'  and  preside  at 
entertainments  that  combine  the  luxury  of  a  Lucullus  or  an 
Apicius  with  the  taste  of  Bruegel's  boors. 

But  these  considerations,  to  which  it  cannot  be  denied 
that  Frenchmen  gave  all  the  weight  they  deserved,  can 
scarcely  be  said  to  exhaust  the  question.  There  are  other 
important  points  of  view  from  which  the  economic  position 
of  a  country  may  and  should  be  studied  besides  that  of  the 
reputation  of  a  finance  minister  or  the  enrichment  of  a 
score  of  manufacturers,  many  of  whom  are  foreigners.  The 
chief  of  these  in  the  present  case  is  the  state  of  agriculture, 
which,  in  a  country  like  Russia,  bears  the  same  relation  to 
all  those  outward  appearances  of  prosperity  which  a  clever 
minister  can  conjure  up  at  a  pinch,  that  a  noumenon  is 
supposed  to  bear  to  phenomena  or  gold  to  the  paper  cur- 
rency based  upon  it.  But  before  touching  upon  this  impor- 
tant question,  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  analyze  very  briefly 
the  series  of  brilliant  financial  operations  effected  by 
M.  Vyshnegradsky  and  belauded  as  a  stroke  of  genius  by 
the  patriotic  press  of  Russia.  The  first  impression  they 
leave  upon  the  minds  of  those  who  run  as  they  read  is  that 
of  some  wonderful  improvement  in  Russia's  solvency  and 
credit,  the  gourdlike  growth  of  which  is  explicable  by  no 
known  cause.  Why,  one  involuntarily  asks,  should  a 
nation's  creditors  consent  to  receive  4  instead  of  the  stip- 
ulated 5  per  cent,  on  an  immense  debt  of  531  millions 
of  roubles,  unless  they  had  good  reason  to  believe  that 
the  nation's  prospects  and  solvency  had  considerably 
improved?  And  on  what  facts  unknown  to  the  most  dili-' 
gent  students  of  contemporary  Russian  history  can  this  flat- 
tering belief  be  based? 

In  the  days  when  science  was  still  to  a  great  extent  mere 
guess  work,  a  certain  monarch  is  reported  to  have  asked  a 
number  of  scientists  to  explain  why  it  is  that  a  live  eel 
dropped  into  a  vessel  brimful  of  pure  cold  water  swims 


1  The  last  instance  of  this  extravagance  occurred  in  St.  Petersburg  in 
February,  1890. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  211 

about  without  causing  the  liquid  to  overflow,  whereas  a 
dead  eel,  in  exactly  the  same  conditions,  causes  it  to  over- 
flow at  once.  Many  and  ingenious  were  the  explanations 
ofl^ered  and  rejected  before  a  matter-of-fact  individual, 
who  believed  in  taking  nothing  on  trust,  declared  that  no 
explanation  whatever  was  needed,  seeing  that  the  so-called 
phenomenon  did  not  exist.  Now  this  is  exactly  th^  case 
with  the  late  financial  operations.  There  has  been  no  con- 
version. Russia  in  reality,  instead  of  converting  a  5  per 
cent,  loan  into  a  4  per  cent,  one,  has  taken  a  very  decided 
plunge  in  the  opposite  direction.  She  continues  to  pay 
practically  5  per  cent,  (mathematically  4.7),  but  on  a  much 
larger  capital  sum  than  before,  and  has  bound  herself  to 
do  so  for  a  very  much  longer  time. 

What  is  a  conversion?  It  is  an  alleviation  of  the  rela- 
tions of  a  debtor  to  his  creditor,  consisting  in  the  substi- 
tution of  a  lower  rate  of  interest  on  the  debt,  the  capital 
sum  of  the  latter  and  the  term  remaining  unchanged.  This 
being  so,  it  is  evident  that  the  word  conversion,  as  applied 
to  the  financial  operations  of  M.  Vyshnegradsky,  is  a  mis- 
nomer, for  both  the  capital  sum  and  the  term  during  which 
the  payments  are  to  be  continued  have  both  been  very  con- 
siderably increased.  Suppose  a  person  borrows  a  sum  of 
p^320,  promising  to  refund  it  in  monthly  payments  of 
;^3o  during  twelve  months;  but  finding  it  difficult  to  meet 
his  obligations,  has  an  interview  with  his  creditor,  who 
consents  to  lighten  his  burden  to  the  extent  of  accepting 
_;^20  a  month  on  condition  that  the  payments  continue 
for  two  years  and  a  half;  would  that  constitute  a  real  alle- 
viation of  that  individual's  financial  obligations?  And 
yet  such  is,  roughly  speaking,  the  character  of  the  recent 
Russian  "conversions." 

Let  us  take  the  loan  of  1877  (81^  million  roubles  bear- 
ing interest  at  5  per  cent.)  which  was  converted  in  Novem- 
ber, 1 888.  The  annual  charges  on  that  debt,  including 
repayment  of  the  capital,  amounted  to  about  5|  millions,' 
and  would  have  ceased  in  twenty-five  years  had  no  conver- 
sion intervened.  The  effect  of  the  conversion,  however, 
was  to  increase  the  capital  sum  from  81^  millions  to  gj^ 
millions  and  to  lessen  the  yearly  payments  from  55  mil- 
lions to  42-V  millions,  but  instead  of  continuing  them  only 
for  twenty-five  years  to  cause  them  to  be  persevered  in  for 

1  The  exact  amount  was  5,688,000  millions  of  roubles. 


212  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

8i-^-  years.  The  dead  loss  to  the  country  from  this  curious 
operation,  which  can  be  calculated  by  a  simple  sum  of  mul- 
tiplication, is  enormous;  the  "gain"  consists  in  the  shift- 
ing of  a  portion  of  the  burden  from  the  present  to  the 
future.  If  this  was  a  wise  move,  there  seems  no  reason 
why  the  minister  did  not  improve  upon  it  and  astonish  the 
natives  —  of  Russia,  at  least  —  by  issuing  bonds  bearing  as 
little  as  3  per  cent,  interest,  a  feat  that  could  easily  have 
been  accomplished  by  increasing  the  capital  sum  by  83  per 
cent.  One  may  form  a  prett\-  fair  estimate  of  the  nature 
of  the  above  operation  from  the  following  consideration: 
At  the  time  of  the  conversion  only  twenty-five  yearly  pay- 
ments of  5|  millions  were  needed  to  wipe  out  the  debt 
completely.  Now,  suppose  the  Government,  in  a  fit  of 
mad  benevolence,  suddenly  agreed  to  make  its  creditors 
not  twenty-five  but  fifty-nine  such  yearly  payments,  the 
loss  to  the  country,  it  is  clear,  would  be  enormous.  And 
yet,  strange  to  say,  even  that  would  be  a  more  profitable 
operation  than  the  actual  conversion,  inasmuch  as  the 
country  would  pay  less  than  it  now  must  pay  by  ;;^i,ioo! 

The  remaining  operations  are  of  a  piece  with  this.  A 
government  must  indeed  be  sorely  pressed  for  ready  money 
if  it  consents  to  issue  4  per  cent,  bonds  for  28  millions  ^ 
redeemable  only  in  eighty-one  years,  in  return  for  a  sum 
of  23^  millions;  for  the  bonds  represent  19  per  cent,  more 
than  the  (Government  received. 

One  is  sorely  embarrassed  to  reconcile  the  exorbitant 
premium  paid  on  these  conversions  with  the  alleged  pros- 
perity of  the  country  and  the  solidity  of  its  credit  at  the 
time  the  operations  were  effected.  Many  years  ago,  when 
avowedly  in  great  distress  and  sadly  in  need  of  funds  to 
construct  strategic  railways,  and  to  enter  the  field  against 
the  Turks,  the  prcmiiun  paid  by  Russia  on  a  loan  of  87I- 
millions  amounted  to  S^\  percent,  of  the  sum  realized, 
whereas  last  year,  when  the  country's  credit  was  alleged  to 
be  unimpeachable,  and  no  need  of  funds  felt,  it  amounted 
to  19.V  per  cent,  of  the  sum  realized.'^  Between  the  years 
1870  and  1889  Russia  realized  from  seven  loans  a  sum  of 
463I  millions,  on  which  she  paid  her  creditors  the  enor- 
mous ])remium  of  170^7^  millions.  During  these  nineteen 
years  only  22^  millions  have  been  wiped  out,  and   it  will 

1  The  exact  sum  is  27,834,000  roubles. 

2  7,584,000  roubles. 

3  Viz.,  15,834,056  roubles. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  213 

require  ixAXy  forty-nine  years  more  merely  to  pay  up  the  re- 
mainder of  the  premium,  so  that  it  is  only  in  the  year  1939 
that  the  posterity  of  the  present  generation  will  have  got 
at  the  debt  itself,  viz.,  463}  millions,  which  they  will  have 
to  cancel  in  the  relatively  short  period  of  32  years,  i.e., 
by  the  year  1970. 

Another  aspect  of  these  conversions  which  throws  con- 
siderable light  upon  the  solvency  of  the  Government  that 
negotiated  them,  is  the  percentage  paid  to  bankers  for 
their  services.  To  find  the  rate  of  the  commission  paid 
to  bankers,  it  is  only  necessary  to  subtract  from  the 
amount  subscribed  the  cost  of  realization.  Now,  for 
the  first  loan  of  125  millions  a  little  over  \\  per  cent, 
was  charged.'  If  it  be  true,  as  has  been  alleged,  that  the 
circumstances  in  which  this  loan  was  floated  constitute  an 
irrefragable  proof  of  a  wonderful  improvement  in  Russia's 
credit,  one  would  naturally  expect  that  the  commission 
charged  for  the  next  loan,  negotiated  shortly  afterwards, 
would  be  considerably  less,  especially  if  the  amount  of  the 
loan  were  much  greater.  And  yet  it  is  the  unexpected 
that  occurs:  for  although  the  sum  raised  amounted  to  175 
millions,  the  bankers  refused  to  have  hand  or  part  in  it 
for  less  than  2.85  per  cent.,  and  the  third  loan,  which  was 
nearly  twice  as  large,-  could  not  be  floated  for  less  than 
2.779  psr  cent.  If  the  conversion  lately  negotiated  by 
Mr.  Goschen  had  been  effected  on  the  lines  of  the  Russian 
conversion,  this  country  would  have  had  to  pay  away  83 
millions  sterling,  of  which  about  17  millions  would  go  to 
the  bankers  and  the  remainder  find  its  way  to  the  pockets 
of  the  creditors. 

Taking  the  entire  conversion  scheme  as  applied  to  the 
various  loans  redeemable  at  various  terms,  and  amounting 
in  all  to  50SL  millions  at  5  per  cent,  interest,  we  find  that 
its  chief  effect  has  been  to  increase  the  capital  sum  by 
nearly  15  percent.,  viz.  582 1  millions.'^  The  annual  charge 
on  this  extra  sum  alone  calculated  for  eighty-one  years 
amount  to  24^  millions.''  Owing,  however,  to  the  lower 
rate  of  interest,  the  reduction  of  the  yearly  expenses  during 
the  first  twenty-five  years  is  appreciable,  although  it  is  but 
as  dust  in  the  balance  when  compared  with  the  increased 
expenditure   during  the    remaining   fifty-six   years.      The 


^  I-S73-  ^  ^\z. :  582,664,000  roubles. 

2  310,498,000  roubles.  ^  24,288,716  roubles. 


214  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

effect,  therefore,  of  the  conversions  has  been,  not  to  allevi- 
ate the  burden  of  the  taxpayers,  but  to  shift  it  from  the  first 
twenty-five  years  to  the  ensuing  fifty-six,  whereby  the  aug- 
mentation of  the  expenditure  during  the  latter  period  is 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  gain  during  the  former.  Ex- 
pressed in  figures  the  alleviation  afforded  during  the  first 
twenty-five  years  amounts  to  3^  millions^  yearly,  or  90I ^ 
millions  in  all,  while  the  loss  during  the  following  fifty-six 
years  reaches  the  colossal  sum  of  448,689,169  roubles! 

It  seems  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  that  the  explan- 
ation of  this  suicidal  policy  is  not  to  be  sought  for  in  any 
real  or  alleged  shortcomings  of  the  minister.  Nature  has 
not  made  M.  Vyshnegradsky  shortsighted  or  dull-witted,  but 
imperious  necessity  compels  him  to  take  very  short  views 
of  his  country's  interests.  Apres  nous  le  deluge  is  the  natural 
device  of  a  government  convinced  that  a  crash  is  inevitable, 
and  anxious  to  stave  it  off  even  for  a  short  time  at  the  cer- 
tain risk  of  extending  its  sphere  of  ruin.  The  minister 
accepted  office  with  the  avowed  object  of  mobilizing  the 
finances  of  the  country,  and  he  is  now  working  out  a  problem 
in  finances  the  data  for  which  were  sujjplied  to  him  by  his 
imperial  master.  When  the  present  Emperor  came  to  the 
throne  he  made  known  to  his  then  Minister  of  P'inances 
his  intention  of  signalizing  the  beginning  of  his  reign  by  a 
measure  rendering  the  paper  rouble  equal  to  the  gold 
rouble,  and  was  deeply  pained  to  find  that  laudable  ambi- 
tion treated  as  a  mere////;;/  desiiicriuin  which  there  was  no 
specific  way  of  realizing.  The  first  man  to  promise  to 
grapple  with  this  task  was  M.  Vyshnegradsky;  and  if  he 
was  well  advised  in  undertaking  it,  he  is  certainly  worthy 
of  high  praise  for  the  successful  way  in  which  he  seems  to 
have  begun  to  accomplish  it.  He  has  taken  a  leaf  from 
the  book  of  the  historic  commander  of  the  beleaguered  city 
who  had  all  the  victuals  that  he  cowld  collect  from  the 
hungry  inhabitants  placed  conspicuously  on  the  walls  in 
order  that  the  soldiers  should  feast  and  make  merry  and 
lead  the  besiegers  to  infer  that,  whatever  else  was  scarce, 
food  was  plenty  enough;  half  the  garrison  and  nearly  all 
of  the  inhabitants  meanwhile  dying  of  hunger. 

A  government  that  borrows  on  such  conditions  as  those 
analyzed  above  must  indeed  be  sorely  pressed  for  money; 


1  More  exactly,  3,630,477  roubles. 

2  More  accurately,  90,761,925  roubles. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  21$ 

as  the  proverb  says,  He  must  be  very  badly  in  want  of  a 
bird  that  will  give  a  groat  for  an  owl.  I  have  it  on  the 
authority  of  two  Russian  specialists,  one  of  whom  was 
recently  an  adviser  of  the  Tsar,  that  the  Government  was 
extremely  embarrassed  to  effect  the  yearly  payments  in  gold 
that  fall  due  on  the  metallic  bonds.  And  what  further 
proof  of  this  is  needed  than  the  acts  of  the  Administration : 
—  the  ruinous  haste  with  which,  in  18S9,  in  spite  of  the 
alleged  surplus  of  34^  millions,  they  gave  bonds  for  28 
millions  in  order  to  raise  the  paltry  and — on  their  own 
showing  —  unnecessary  sum  of  231  millions;  the  reckless 
way  in  which  they  imperil  the  country's  good  name  —  for 
Russia's  reputation  as  a  punctual  payer  of  the  stipulated 
rate  of  interest  was  heretofore  above  reproach — by  nip- 
ping and  filing '  the  coins  they  are  too  timid  to  confiscate ; ' 
the  imposition  of  a  tax  upon  movable  property  changing 
hands  by  gift,  in  flagrant  violation  of  the  acknowledged 
rights  of  Russia's  creditors;^  the  establishment  of  a  tax 
upon  interest-bearing  coupons,  which  was  likewise  a  serious 
infraction  of  the  rights  of  her  foreign  creditors  as  defined 
by  Russian  law;  the  statutes  touching  the  conversions;  the 
augmentation  of -various  taxes;  the  issue  of  prize  lottery 
bonds  —  a  confessedly  immoral  way  of  raising  money  — 
more  than  100  millions  of  which  were  silently  appropriated 

1  The  Government  effected  the  conversion  on  the  very  eve  of  the  draw- 
ing of  the  old  bonds,  and  managed  to  adjourn  the  first  drawing  of  tlie  new 
ones  for  a  considerable  time  in  order  to  put  off  paying  a  paltry  sum  of 
514,500  roubles.  The  drawing  should  have  taken  place  within  six  months, 
but  it  was  adroitly  deferred  for  nine,  and  as  the  amortization  of  drawn  bonds 
does  not  take  place  until  three  months  after  the  drawing,  one  whole  term 
was  passed  without  any  amortization.  This  means  the  addition  of  six 
months  to  the  eighty-one  years  before  which  the  bonds  are  not  redeemable. 

2  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that  M.  Vyshnegradsky  is  not  responsible  for  this 
law,  which  was  enacted  on  the  27th  June,  1882.  I  refer  to  it  because  it 
shows  that  the  need  of  ready  money  felt  by  the  Russian  Government  existed 
before  the  present  Minister's  nomination. 

3  Russia's  progress  in  the  direction  of  Protection  during  the  past  two 
decades  may  be  briefly  described  as  follows  :  —  In  1868  only  machines  and 
linen  goods  were  taxed  higher  than  before,  while  the  duties  on  all  other 
foreign  imports  were  lessened.  In  1876  all  duties  were  made  payable  in 
gold,  a  change  which  at  that  time  was  tantamount  to  a  rise  of  40  per  cent. 
In  1880  the  free  importation  of  metals  for  the  purpose  of  constructing 
machines,  ships,  ai»d  railroads  was  abolished,  and  m  1881  all  customs  duties 
were  increased  by  10  per  cent.  In  1882  the  duty  on  metals  and  metal  goods 
was  again  auginented ;  in  1885  there  was  a  general  rise  of  from  10  to  20  per 
cent,  on  all  foreign  imports.  In  1890  the  imperial  receipts  were  found  to 
be  falling  off  so  rapidly  that  all  duties  were  with  unprecedented  suddenness 
increased  by  from  20  to  40  per  cent.,  and  as  this  seems  still  too  little,  a  new- 
tariff  with  still  higher  duties  —  a  sort  of  Russian  McKinley  Bill — is  being 
drawn  up. 


2l6  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

to  the  pressing  needs  of  the  Government;  the  sudden  in- 
crease, a  few  months  ago,  of  all  customs  duties  by  from  20 
to  40  per  cent.,  the  object  of  which  was  admitted  to  be 
purely  fiscal;  the  further  increase  of  that  tariff  which  was 
promulgated  a  few  days  later,  and  bears  no  closer  relation 
to  Protection  than  bankruptcy  does  to  philanthropy;  and, 
lastly,  the  cruel  measures  now  being  resorted  -to  in  order 
to  compel  ruined  peasants  to  pay  exorbitant  taxes.  Things 
have  gone  so  far  that  there  has  more  than  once  been  ques- 
tion of  withdrawing  the  sums  of  money  which,  as  an  obtru- 
sive proof  of  solvency,  Russia  usually  keeps  in  England, 
and  I  should  not  be  at  all  surprised  if  that  shewbread,  at 
])resent  in  the  keeping  of  the  Rothschilds,  were  speedily 
withdrawn  and  ravenously  devoured. 

It  is  generally  believed  by  political  economists  of  this 
and  other  countries  that  the  Russian  Government  has 
acquired  the  conviction  that  the  development  of  native 
manufacturing  industries  is  the  one  thing  needful  to  a 
purely  agricultural  country,  and  that  the  most  effective  way 
to  foster  them  is  to  have  recourse  to  a  rigorous  policy  of 
Protection;  for  this  reason  it  has  gone  on  year  after  year 
augmenting  the  tariff  until  at  last  Protection  seems  to  be 
merging  into  prohibition  pure  and  simple.  If  this  were 
the  true  explanation  of  Russia's  commercial  policy  of  the 
past  ten  years  we  should  find  that  articles  that  cannot  be 
produced  in  the  country  would  scarcely  be  taxed  at  all,  and 
certainly  not  to  the  same  extent  as  those  which  seriously 
compete  with  goods  of  Russian  manufacture,  while  the 
duties  levied  on  foreign  goods  would  in  no  case  be  allowed 
to  pass  the  line  where  they  become,  on  the  one  hand,  a 
premium  upon  the  sluggishness  of  producers,  and  on  the 
other  a  galling  burden  on  the  taxpayers.  But  the  truth  is, 
that  the  Government  is  in  such  pressing  need  of  ready 
money  that  it  snatches  at  all  the  miserable  cheese-parings 
that  can  be  scraped  together  by  increase  of  duties,  even  at 
the  risk  of  ultimately  undermining  the  very  manufactures 
it  would  gladly  protect  and  develop.  Hence  the  fiscal 
character  of  most  of  the  items  of  the  tariff.  Those  who 
hope  therefore  by  dint  of  detailed  discussion  of  the  respect- 
ive merits  of  Protection  and  Free  Trade  to  persuade  the 
Russian  Government  to  strike  out  a  different  line  of  policy 
have  as  much  chance  of  success  as  the  nervous  old  lady 
had  who  screamed  out  to  the 'man  who  had  slipped  and  was 
rolling  i)recipitously  down  a  steep   flight  of   stairs,    "Go 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  217 

back !  go  back  1 "  in  the  vain  hope  of  compelling  him  to 
retrace  or  arrest  his  course. 

Except  in  official  documents,  in  which  the  observance  of 
certain  traditional  forms  is  a  matter  of  necessity,  it  never 
occurs  even  to  the  most  extreme  advocate  of  the  Govern- 
ment's present  commercial  policy  to  make  a  pretence  of 
believing  that  this  enormous  augmentation  of  customs 
duties  is  productive  of  the  slightest  benefit  to  the  country 
or  the  industries.^  It  is  perfectly  understood  that  the  gain 
is  unequally  divided  between  the  Government  and  the 
manufacturers.  "The  Government  is  awfully  good  to  us 
manufacturers,"  exclaimed  a  German  settled  in  Russia  to 
several  Russians  and  foreigners  in  a  Moscow  hotel  very 
lately.  "  We  have  carte  blanche  to  tax  the  natives  to  our 
hearts'  content.  I  raised  a  howl  myself  a  year  ago,  and 
was  immediately  appeased  by  the  imposition  of  a  tax  the 
amount  of  which  I  had  myself  fixed."  "Is  it  likely  to  do 
any  real  good  to  native  industry?"  I  inquired.  "Well," 
he  replied  with  a  knowing  smile,  "I  am  the  chief  'native' 
that  profits  by  it.  Half-a-dozen  others  engaged  in  the  same 
trade  will  also  make  a  good  thing  of  it,  but  the  people  will 
have  to  pay  more  for  the  same  goods;  that's  about  all."  ^ 

No  merchants  or  manufacturers  in  the  world  are  so  impa- 
tient to  enrich  themselves  as  the  Russians.  Ten  per  cent, 
on  their  capital  —  nay,  20  per  cent,  is  not  nearly  enough  to 
satisfy  their  cravings.  Many  of  them  look  upon  trade  and 
industry  as  legalized  robbery,  and  harmonize  their  actions 
with  their  theory.  Hence  their  rooted  aversion  to  every 
kind  of  enterprise  that  requires  continued  application  to 
business  and  yields  modest,  though  certain,  profits ;  hence 
the  contempt  with  which  they  allude  to  the  markets  of 
Persia,  China,  Bulgaria,  Servia,  which  might  be  theirs  by  a 
thousand  rights,  but  are  now  being  gradually  closed  to 
them.     As  soon  as  they  discovered  that  the  Russian  Govern- 


1  In  the  beginning  of  this  paper  I  enumerated  some  of  tlie  apparent 
benefits  of  Russian  "  Protection,"  among  which  is  the  increase  of  industrial 
manufactures.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  greater  number  belong  to  foreigners 
who  opened  them  on  the  very  borders  of  Russia  and  Germany :  "  so  that 
in  this  wav  all  the  sacrifices  made  by  the  nation  are  fruitless,"  remarks 
Professor  Anstivol,  a  Russian  authority  on  such  matters.  Even  the  trade 
balance  is  an  eloquent  protest  against  high  duties.  In  1882  Russian  exports 
were  valued  at  667?  millions,  and  imports  at  527I  millions;  in  1886  the 
exports  had  fallen  to  450^  millions,  and  the  imports  to  3795  millions. 

2  There  are  two  Englishmen  of  note  in  the  commercial  world  who  were 
present  at  that  conversation.  They  were  amused  at  the  curious  revelation, 
and  alluded  sorrowfully  to  the  5  per  cent,  they  receive  on  their  own  capital. 


2l8  RUSSIAN    TRAITS   AND    TERRORS. 

ment  was  willing  to  enable  them  to  double  and  triple  their 
profits  without  insisting  upon  their  spending  an  extra  copeck, 
petitions  for  increased  duties  w^ere  showered  upon  the 
minister  like  snowflakes  in  early  winter.  So  eager  has  the 
Government  been  to  avail  itself  of  every  possible  pretext  to 
raise  the  tariff,  that  it  seldom  discriminated  between  for- 
eigners in  Russia  and  genuine  Russians.  In  the  first  mer- 
chant guild  of  Moscow  there  are  four  hundred  merchants 
inscribed,  and  less  than  the  half  of  them  are  Russians. 
Out  of  one  hundred  and  thirty-two  industrial  export  and 
commission  offices  in  that  city  only  forty  are  Russian;  in 
the  remainder  the  business  is  carried  on,  the  books  are  kept, 
in  foreign  languages,  and  there  is  scarcely  lo  per  cent,  of 
their ^/>rrso /I fie/  who  are  Russians,  and  the  greater  part  of 
these  are  employed  as  servants,  messengers,  and  watchmen. 
It  is  a  very  significant  fact  that  the  undignified  whining  and 
lamenting  on  the  part  of  the  manufacturers  which  usually 
precedes  a  new  rise  in  the  customs  duties  is  termed  Goi/- 
joniug  from  the  name  of  a  foreigner,  Goujon,  resident  in 
Moscow,  who  has  raised  the  practice  to  an  art.^  This  year 
the  French  opened  an  exhibition  in  Moscow,  subject, 
of  course,  to  all  the  lets  and  hindrances  that  handicap 
foreigners  generally.  These,  however,  seemed  insufficient 
to  the  Moscow  Goujons,  who  requested  the  minister  to 
increase  the  duties  on  the  goods  destined  to  be  exhibited; 
the  same  pillars  of  Russian  industry,  as  soon  as  they  learned 
that  Captain  Wiggins  had  arrived  safe  in  Siberia,  raised 
once  more  their  plaintive  cry,  in  response  to  which  the 
sympathetic  minister  immediately  drew  up  a  P.ill  imposing 
considerable  duties  on  all  foreign  goods  imported  into 
Siberia  by  the  new  route." 

M.  Vyshnegradsky  cannot,  as  some  suppose,  plead  igno- 
rance of  the  effects  of  his  commercial  policy.  He  per- 
ceives as  clearly  as  any  member  of  the  Cobden  Club  that 
high  duties  alter  the  normal  conditions  of  exchange  between 

1  Cf.  West  Slavonic  News,  St.  Petersburg,  14th  August,  1890. 

2  Cf.  Svett,  22nd  November,  1888.  The  steamers  and  trading  vessels  that 
formerly  used  to  come  lo  Russia  with  cargo  have  now  only  ballast,  which 
they  unceremoniously  fling  into  the  sea  near  the  ports,  of  the  Azov  Sea,  for 
instance.  They  make  up  for  the  loss  of  the  profit  which  a  cargo  would 
bring  in  by  raising  their  freights  and  compelling  Russian  exporters  to  pay 
the  difference.  In  the  Azov  Sea  alone  12  million  poods  (a  pood  is  36  lbs.) 
of  ballast  is  annually  thrown  into  the  sea.  In  1888  the  number  of  trading 
vessels  that  came  into  Russian  ports  with  ballast  and  without  cargo  was 
8,680,  whereas  those  that  carried  cargo  of  any  kind  and  quantity  numbered 
only  6,291. 


RUSSIAN   FINANCE.  2I9 

the  tiller  of  the  soil  and  the  manufacturer,  whose  reciprocal 
relations  are  such  that  an  abnormal  profit  given  to  the  one 
can  only  be  realized  by  a  corresponding  loss  inflicted  upon 
the  other,  so  that  the  tariff  which  enables  the  manufacturer 
to  sell  his  goods  at  a  very  high  rate  compels  the  farmer  to 
part  with  his  for  a  proportionately  smaller  sum.  It  is 
obvious,  therefore,  that  the  State  has  its  eyes  wide  open 
when,  in  the  person  of  the  minister,  it  compels  the  unfor- 
tunate peasant  to  give  up  a  portion  of  his  income  to  be 
divided  between  the  manufacturers  and  the  Treasury.  Can 
it  be  seriously  advanced  that  what  may  be  termed  Prohibi- 
tive Protection  is  calculated  to  benefit,  directly  or  indi- 
rectly, Russian  manufacturers?  The  Novoye  Vremya,  an 
extreme  Protectionist  journal,  replies  in  the  negative,, and 
calls  this  hope  an  idle  dream  utterly  incapable  of  realiza- 
tion.^ Some  of  the  most  honest  manufacturers  have  solemnly 
made  the  same  assertion."  Moreover  the  merchants  them- 
selves declare  that  industry  was  never  so  depressed  as  it  is  at 
this  moment.  Last  autumn  the  Finance  Minister,  when  on 
his  inspecting  tour  in  Eastern  Russia,  was  deeply  touched  by 
the  tears  and  lamentations  of  provincial  Goujons,  who  com- 
plained that  they  were  being  ruined  by  the  competition  of 
foreigners,  by  the  immigrant  Germans,  the  wandering  Jews, 
the  intolerable  taxes,  the  treacherous  climate,  the  devastat- 
ing hail,  the  unsparing  lightning,  the  drying  up  of  rivers  in 
summer,  the  inundations  of  spring  and  autumn,  etc.,  etc. 
In  Nischny  Novgorod  they  besought  the  minister  to  reduce 
their  taxes,  though  for  their  sakes  the  peasants'  taxes  had 
been  doubled,  and  the  Mayor  of  Kazan  assured  the  minis- 
ter that  —  "Our  trade  and  agriculture  are  being  ruined,  not 
daily,  but  hourly."^  Figures,  however,  are  more  eloquent 
than  words,  and  they  tell  us  that  after  ten  years  of  paternal 
protection  of  the  iron  and  metal  industries  a  plough  (10- 
inch)  can  be  made  in  Germany  for  2  roubles  72  copecks, 
while  in  Russia  the  cost  of  production  is  5  roubles  60 
copecks;  a  14-inch  plough  can  be  made  in  England  and 
Germany  for  2  roubles  53  copecks,  whereas  no  Russian 
manufacturer  can  turn  it  out  for  less  than  5  roubles  27 
copecks,  although  labor  is  far  cheaper  in  Russia;  and  an 
8-inch  plough  costs  its  maker  2  roubles  94  copecks  in  Ger- 
many and  5  roubles  50  copecks  in  Russia. 

1  Novoye  Vremya,  29th  October,  1890.  2  ibid. 

3  Northern-  Messenger ,  October,  1890. 


220  RUSSIAN    TRAITS   AND    TERRORS.  ♦ 

A  few  years  ago  when  English  coal  coming  to  ports  of 
the  Black  Sea  was  shut  out  by  a  protective,  or  rather,  pro- 
hibitive, duty,  the  Russian  coal-mines  merely  raised  their 
prices  without  taking  any  means  to  provide  for  the  in- 
creased demand.  The  result  was  a  coal  famine  in  the 
south  of  Russia;  mineral  fuel  was  sold  at  fancy  prices, 
the  cost  of  wood  rose  proportionately,  while  the  last  forests 
of  the  south  were  hewn  down;  many  manufactories  had  to 
be  closed  for  want  of  fuel  (for  instance,  the  works  of  Bel- 
lino-Fenderich,  in  Odessa);  the  poor  inhabitants  stood  for 
hours  in  long  rows  waiting  for  their  turn  to  receive  a  little 
coal  gratis  from  the  city;  attacks  were  made  upon  the  coal- 
stores  in  Kharkoff,  and  with  considerable  diiificulty  a  rising 
was  prevented.'  In  1888,  when  the  duty  on  agricultural 
implements  was  raised  to  76  copecks  (gold)  a  pood,-  Rus- 
sian manufacturers,  although  foreseeing  the  increased  de- 
mand, conceived  that  they  had  done  their  duty  by  merely 
raising  the  price  on  all  these  productions  without  improv- 
ing the  quality,  enlarging  their  own  works,  or  providing  an 
increased  supply.  The  result  was  that  hundreds  of  farmers 
had  to  be  told  that  their  orders  could  not  be  executed,  as 
the  articles. in  question  were  all  sold.''^  In  that  same  year 
there  was  also  a  large  demand  for  threshing-machines,  but 
there  were  practically  none  in  stock,  and  the  Russian  manu- 
factarers  could  not  undertake  to  make  them  quickly  enough, 
so  that  Russian  firms  were  compelled  to  order  them  from 
abroad  by  the  mail  trains.^  In  the  south  of  Russia  alone, 
out  of  400  threshing-machines  ordered,  Russian  manufac- 
turers could  only  su])ply  40,  and  the  remainder  had  to  be 
ordered  by  tclci:;raph  from  abroad,  whereby  the  farmers  had 
to  P^y  ^80,000  duty.'' 

'i'he  only  class  benefited  by  these  duties  are  the  manufac- 
turers, whose  profits  attract  the  ordinary  Russian  with  the 
irresistible  force  of  a  newly-discovered  gold-mine.  Hun- 
dreds rush  eagerly  in,  investing  borrowed  money  and  trail- 
ing a  miserable  existence  crippled  by  the  exorbitant  interest 
which  they  have  to  pay  on  the  initial  debt.     Those  who 


1  Cf.,  for  instance,  the  St.  Petersburg  Journal  ( Vedomoste),  4th  March, 
1888;  the  Messenger  of  Europe,  December,  1890,  p.  819.  It  seems  very 
absurd  that  tlie  owners  of  coal-mines,  for  whose  benc^fit  the  duty  was  raised, 
were  themselves  obliged  to  order  English  coals  by  telegraph  and  deliver 
them  to  their  customers  in  fulfilment  of  contracts  for  Russian  coal  (loc. 
cit.). 

2  36  lbs.  3  (jf.  Novoye  Vremya. 
4  Agricultural  Journal,  1889,  No.  4,  p.  74.         5  j^id. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  221 

work  with  their  own  capital  grow  rapidly  rich  without 
spending  a  copeck  to  improve  the  machinery,  extend  opera- 
tions, or  otherwise  indirectly  contribute  to  establish  native 
industry  on  a  solid  footing.  We  have  it  on  the  authority 
of  the  official  journal  of  the  Ministry  of  Finances  that  the 
ordinary  rate  of  interest  on  the  capital  invested  in  Rus- 
sian manufactures  is  seldom  less  than  20  per  cent.,  and 
usually  from  30  to  40.^  As  a  matter  of  fact  it  is  a  good 
deal  more.  No  industry  has  been  so  perfected,  so  cheap- 
ened, or  rendered  such  a  success  as  sugar-boiling;  and  yet, 
if  we  analyze  it  carefully,  we  discover  a  state  of  things  that 
would  seem  utterly  incredible  were  it  not  an  acknowledged 
and  incontrovertible  fact.  In  Russia  the  prices  of  sugar  are 
exorbitant,  the  manufacturers'  profits  are  enormous,  but  they 
are  most  frequently  eaten  up  by  interest  on  their  debts;  the 
existence  of  many  of  the  works  is  so  precarious  that  a  slight 
fluctuation  in  prices  would  suffice  to  give  them  their  death- 
blow.- To  obviate  competition  the  producers  agreed  a 
couple  of  years  ago  to  offer  only  a  certain  fixed  quantity  of 
sugar  for  sale  in  the  home  markets,  and  to  export  all  the  sur- 
plus production,  selling  it,  if  needful,  under  cost  price. 
This  is  rendered  possible  by  the  premium  offered  by  the 
Government  for  every  pound  of  sugar  exported,  the  excise 
duty  being  at  once  refunded.  The  effect  of  this  on  the  ex- 
port trade  has  been  to  increase  the  export  of  sugar  to  sixty- 
eight  times  what  it  was  a  few  years  before.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  has  to  be  sold  so  cheap  that  English  and  Persian 
consumers  pay  350  per  cent,  less  for  Russian  sugar  than  do 
the  Russians  themselves.^     Consequently  sugar  in  Russia  is 

1  The  Messenger  of  Finances,  1887.  The  woollen  manufacturers,  Thorn- 
ton &  Co.,  receive  45  per  cent,  on  their  capital ;  the  Krenholm  Works, 
44 /"s  percent. ;  the  Nevsky  Cotton  Works,  38  per  cent.;  the  Nikolsky  Works 
of  Morozoff,  28  per  cent.;  the  Tzmailovsky  Cotton  Works,  26  per  cent.; 
those  of  Rabeneck,  as/o  per  cent. ;  the  Kat'herinhof  Cotton  Works,  23  per 
cent.,  etc.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  interest  is  much  greater  than  is  here 
shown;  "for  in  all  such  official  reports  the  expenses  are  deliberately  ex- 
aggerated in  the  first  place  in  order  that  the  profit  should  not  give  rise  to 
new  taxes  on  manufactured  goods ;  in  the  second  place,  in  order  to  lessen 
the  amount  payable  to  the  Treasury  in  accordance  with  the  law  levying  3 
per  cent,  on  all  net  profits ;  and  thirdly,  that  the  manufacturers  should  pre- 
serve the  right  of  bemoaning  the  hard  times  and  robbing  further  the  public." 
Cf.  petition  of  the  Imperial  Economical  Society  for  modifications  in  the 
Russian  Customs  Tariff,  St.  Petersburg,  1890. 

2  Cf.  Novoye  Vremya,  20th  October,  1890. 

3  The  quantity  of  raw  sugar  that  is  sold  for  from  i  rouble  41  copecks  to 
2  roubles  55  copecks  in  London,  costs  from  4  roubles  70  copecks  to  4 
roubles  85  copecks  in  St.  Petersburg,  while  refined  sugar  that  fetches  from 
5  roubles  80  copecks  to  6 roubles  15  copecks  in  the  Russian  capital,  is  sold 


222  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

s 

an  article  of  luxury  which  only  a  very  limited  number  of  per- 
sons can  indulge  in,  the  average  ICnglishman  consuming 
twelve  times  more  sugar  in  a  year  than  the  Russian.  In  the 
latter  country  there  are  tens  of  thousands  of  peo])le  who 
anxiously  keep  one  small  piece  of  lump  sugar  in  their 
mouths  while  they  drink  two  or  even  three  glasses  of  tea, 
which  is  allowed  to  wet  without  dissolving  the  sweet  morsel. 
This  is  termed  taking  sugar  v  preekooskoo.  There  is  another 
less  wasteful  method  in  vogue  in  many  country  places  of 
entertainment  for  man  and  beast,  where  one  large  lump  of 
sugar  is  suspended  in  a  line  small  net  from  the  ceiling.  T 
need  not  describe  in  greater  detail  how  very  gradually  it  is 
consumed,  or  by  how  many  tea  drinkers;  it  is  also  perhaps 
superfluous  to  remark  that  in  no  other  country  has  the  prin- 
ciple of  communism  or  the  absence  of  squeamishness  been 
carried  to  greater  lengths^  than  in  Russia,  whose  inhabi- 
tants allow  themselves  to  be  thus  tantalized  while  enormous 
quantities  of  sugar  are  being  practically  given  away  every 
year  to  foreigners.  Another  curious  result  of  this  abnor- 
mal state  of  things  is  the  existence  of  a  large  contraband 
trade  between  Persia  and  Russia,  Persian  and  Armenian 
merchants  smuggling  Russian  sugar  into  Russia,  and  un- 
derselling Russian  merchants  who  deal  in  the  orthodox 
article  which  has  not  been  exported. - 

But  whoever  else  gains  by  the  high  tariff,  the  tiller  of  the 
soil  stands  to  lose,  and  the  extent  of  his  loss  is  incalculable. 
l"he  limits  of  his  resources  can  be  as  accurately  gauged  as 
were  those  of  Tom  Brown's  box  of  marbles  by  his  inquisi- 
tive schoolfellow.  Questioned  lately  by  the  Government, 
merely  for  form's  sake,  as  to  the  advisability  of  again 
raising  the  duty  on  implements  of  field  labor,  all  the  agri- 
cultural societies  of  the  empire  gave  it  as  their  conviction 
that  Russian  agriculture  is  at  its  last  gasp.  But  perhaps  the 
aim  and  object  of  these  societies  precluded  them  from  giv- 
ing any  different  reply?  If  so,  the  opinion  of  the  Commit- 
tees of  Trade  and  Manufactures  of  Odessa,  Kharkoff,  Riga, 
Reval  —  i.e.,  of  bodies  directly  interested  in  the  growth  of 
Russian  industry  —  comes  with  so  much  greater  force,  and 

in  London  for  from  i  rouble  8i  copecks  lo  2  roubles  45  copecks.  And  this 
in  spite  of  the  circumstance  that  in  Russia  rents  are  much  lower,  labor  far 
cheaper,  and  the  price  of  land  considerably  less  than  elsewhere.  (Cf. 
Novoye  Vremya,  26th  November,  1890.) 

1  The  technical  name  for  this  extraordinary  economical  way  of  consum- 
ing sugar  is  v preelizkoo,  which  means  literally,  "  sugar  for  licking." 

2  Cf.  iXovo^'c  Vremya,  27th  October,  1890. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  22-^ 

they  declared  themselves  opposed  to  the  increase  of  those 
duties  on  the  intelligible  principle  that  it  would  be  folly  to 
kill  the  hen  that  lays  the  golden  eggs.^  The  Agricultural 
Society  of  Poltava  quoted  figures  -  to  show  that  the  proposed 
duties  on  agricultural  machines  amounted  to  three -fourths 
of  the  taxes  on  land,  and  the  Economical  Society  of  St. 
Petersburg  has  made  it  clear  that  this  statement  is  well 
within  the  truth.  To  take  but  one  article  —  scythes  —  we 
find  that  according  to  the  new  tariff,  if  the  most  moderate 
of  the  different  projects  becomes  law,  it  will  impose  a 
yearly  tax  of  311,000  roubles,  exclusive  of  the  rise  in  the 
price  over  and  above  the  duties.  That  this  is  not  being 
done  in  the  interests  of  Protection  is  self-evident;  scythes 
are  not  manufactured  in  Russia,  and  were  the  duties 
increased  as  much  as  1,000  per  cent.,  the  peasants  to  whom 
they  are  now  indispensable  would  still  have  to  invest  in 
foreign  scythes.  "Let  us  not  mask  this  duty,"  exclaims 
the  Protectionist  organ,  "with  the  fig-leaf  of  Protection, 
for  we  cannot  possibly  protect  a  branch  of  industry  that 
does  not  exist." ^ 

But  it  is  not  only  in  the  guise  of  a  heavy  tax  that  these  cus- 
toms react  upon  the  peasantry  at  large.  In  many  cases  they 
act  as  effective  preventives  of  that  gradual  progress  the  ab- 
sence of  which  is  stagnation  and  ruin.  Ploughs  are  so  scarce 
among  petty  farmers  that  the  Moscow  Zemstvo  lends  a  num- 
ber of  them  gratis  every  year  in  the  hope  of  inducing  the 
peasants  to  buy  them ;  *  and  as  for  scythes  —  a  primitive  im- 
plement enough  in  these  days  of  mowing  machines  —  the 
peasants  of  large  districts  of  some  of  the  finest  meadowland 
in  all  Russia  have  not  yet  begun  to  see  their  utility.  In  the 
rich  meadows  of  the  Dvina  Valley,  the  peasants  mow  the 
grass  with  an  implement  called  a  "  hump"  —  a  large  reaping- 
hook,  two  feet  in  diameter,  which,  though  too  heavy  for  one 
hand,  has  but  one  short  handle  for  both.  "  In  order  to  mow 
with  this,  the  laborer  must  double  himself  up,  holding  the 
short  handle  in  both  hands  and  turn  the  'hump'  round, 
after  each  stroke,  from  right  to  left  and  from  left  to  right, 
so  that  its  edge  may  be  turned  towards  the  grass  to  be  cut 
down  by  the  next  stroke."     It  is  a  species  of  torture  to 

'^Ci.Novoye  Vremya,  14th  November,  1890;  Russian  News  (Moscow), 
I2th  November,  1890. 

2  Novoye  Vremya,  loc.  cit. 

3  Novoye  Vremya,  14th  November,  1890. 

4  Novoye  Vremya,  30th  November,  1890, 


224  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

mow  thus:  "it  is  hard  to  breathe,  the  blood  rises  to  your 
head,  and  on  a  hot  day  you  have  not  the  faintest  shade 
around."  ^  For  agricultural  machines  and  implements  the 
l"'inns,  among  whom  the  Imperial  (jovcrnment  intends  to 
introduce  Russian  ways,  pay  4.98  per  cent,  /ess  than  the 
Russians !  During  the  last  six  years  the  average  consump- 
tion of  bread  and  corn  by  the  individual  has  decreased 
by  one  per  cent. 

The  agricultural  class  in  Russia  has  been  carrying  on  a 
desperate  struggle  during  the  past  few  years  of  the  Protec- 
tionist era  against  adverse  conditions  that  bid  fair  in  a 
short  time  to  reduce  it  to  rack  and  ruin.  Corn-growing 
has  been  found  less  and  less  profitable,  while  some  kinds  of 
it  are  positively  ruinous.  Among  other  misfortunes,  the 
land  has  been  rapidly  losing  its  productiveness,  and  for 
want  of  artificial  fertilizers  is  now,  in  many  places,  thor- 
oughly exhausted.  Yet  in  proportion  as  the  profits  dimin- 
ished, or  gave  place  to  positive  losses,  the  taxes  —  to  pay 
for  sentimental  wars  and  barren  conquests  —  have  been 
steadily  increasing.  Unable  to  meet  his  obligations,  the 
peasant  at  first  found  an  easy  way,  by  means  of  private 
credit,  of  transforming  the  taxes  into  debts  which,  aug- 
menting from  season  to  season,  have  at  last  reached  such' 
overwhelming  dimensions  that  neither  the  fear  of  distraint 
nor  the  ignominy  of  the  lash  any  longer  sufifices  to  sharpen 
his  wits  to  the  degree  of  inventiveness  sufficient  to  raise 
the  money,  so  the  land  is  being  sold  and  its  whilom  owners 
turned  adrift  in  thousands  to  swell  the  militia  of  vice 
and  crime.  In  many  large  districts  the  price  of  land, 
though  greatly  fallen,  is  still  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
money  value  of  its  produce,  and  in  few  cases  can  the  tillers 
of  the  soil  realize  by  agricultural  labor  alone  sufficient  prof- 
its to  support  the  stoical  life  of  the  Russian  peasant.  In 
the  twelve  governments  drained  by  the  Volga  there  are 
peasants  to  the  number  of  one  million  and  a  quarter,  whose 
land  could  not  possibly  maintain  them,  even  if  they  were 
entirely  exempted  from  rates,  rents,  and  taxes.  They 
struggle  hard  by  means  of  domestic  trades,  or  work  in  fac- 
tories or  shops  in  distant  cities  far  away  from  their  fami- 
lies, to  eke  out  a  miserable  livelihood.  Comparative 
success  smiles  on  a  few  individual  units,  but  grim  want 
devours  many  thousands  and  tens  of  thousands.' 

1  Cf.  Moscow  Gazette,  14th  November,  1890. 

-  Cf.,  />//(•;■  alia,  Novoye  I'remya,  loth  Januar}',  1890;   15th  March,  J890; 
Nedelya,  i?th  October,  1890. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  22$ 

The  soil  in  Russia  is  tilled  by  two  distinct  classes  of 
agriculturists,  the  nobles  and  the  peasants,  both  of  whom 
are  hopelessly  ruined.  The  latter  possess  much  too  little 
land  to  support  life,  wherever  the  soil  is  fertile,  and  far 
too  much  to  pay  rates  and  taxes  for  in  districts  where  it  is 
barren.  The  former  have  to  cope  with  the  difficulty  of 
hired  labor,  which  in  Russia  is  such  an  insurmountable 
obstacle  to  success  that  it  has  become  an  economical  axiom 
that  the  soil,  to  yield  a  profit,  must  be  owned  by  those  who 
till  it  and  tilled  by  those  who  own  it.  The  dismal  tale  of 
the  nobles  is  soon  told.  Improvidence  and  the  difficulties 
of  hired  labor  soon  brought  them  to  the  verge  of  ruin,  to 
rescue  them  from  which  the  Bank  of  the  Nobility  was 
founded.  From  1886  to  1888  this  institution  advanced  24 
millions  sterling  at  a  comparatively  low  rate  of  interest, 
with  the  following  startling  results:  —  the  arrears  in  Octo- 
ber, 1886,  amounted  to  ^6,000;  in  April,  1887,  to  ;^{^39,- 
7I7;  in  October,  1887,  to  ^109,104;  in  April,  1888,  to 
;^i69,7i4.  In  1889  a  considerable  number  of  estates 
belonging  to  noblemen  were  advertised  to  be  sold  for 
debts.  But  the  Government  which  had  turned  the  peasants 
into  tax-paying  machines,  resolved  to  stretch  out  a  helping 
hand  to  the  nobles,  and  with  this  object  in  view,  did  not 
hesitate  to  demoralize  the  people  by  issuing  a  lottery  loan. 
All  arrears  were  thereupon  wiped  out  with  the  proceeds  and 
added  to  the  capital  sum  of  the  debt,  and  even  the  interest 
on  that  for  the  six  ensuing  months  was  in  great  part  wiped 
out,  so  that  all  the  nobles  were  required  to  do  was  to  pay  a 
portion  of  the  charges^  that  fell  due  during  the  six  months 
that  followed  the  issue  of  the  loan.  The  result  is  far  from 
encouraging;  the  loan  in  question  is  not  yet  fully  paid  up, 
and  we  already  hear  of  over  three  thousand  estates  adver- 
tised for  sale  by  the  Bank  of  the  Nobility.^  Taking  the 
average  estate  of  a  Russian  noble  to  possess  a  money  value 
of  ^4,000,  it  would  follow  that  land  to  the  value  of  12  mil- 
lions sterling  is  being  put  up  for  sale  by  the  auctioneer. 
And  yet  the  Bank  of  the  Nobility  was  and  is  a  benevolent 
rather  than  a  business  institution,  and  advanced  money  to 
its  clients  at  a  lower  rate  of  interest  than  it  paid  itself. 

The  peasants  are  still  far  worse  off  than  the  nobles,  who 
can  generally  manage  to  lead  a  parasitic  life  when  an  inde- 


1  The   annual   charges  amount   only  to  5^  per  cent,   yearly,  including 
amortization  and  interest. 

2  Cf,  Nedelya,  p.  23,  November,  1890, 


226  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

pendent  existence  is  no  longer  possible.  The  necessity 
of  paying  heavy  taxes,  made  painfully  clear  by  the  unspar- 
ing application  of  the  rod  and  the  lash/  compels  the 
])easant  to  mobilize  his  finances  as  quickly  as  may  be,  and 
if,  as  is  generally  the  case,  he  have  none,  to  borrow  at  a 
high  rate  of  interest.  The  various  species  of  mushroom 
which  in  I'^ngland  are  eaten  with  relish  and  impunity,  in 
Russia  are  usually  poisonous;  and  in  like  manner  the  sys- 
ten^  of  credit  which  in  other  countries  materially  assists  the 
tiller  of  the  soil  to  tide  over  hard  times,  in  Russia  not  only 
gnaws  the  debtor  to  the  bones,  but,  to  use  Tertullian's 
forcible  simile,  sucks  out  all  his  blood  and  marrow.  Lest 
the  expression,  "high  rate  of  interest,"  prove  misleading, 
it  may  be  as  well  to  state  at  once  that  it  should  not  be 
taken  to  mean  8,  lo,  or  even  12  per  cent.  Indeed,  "the 
Russian  peasant  thinks  of  terms  like  these  as  of  a  boon  too 
precious  to  be  obtained  outside  the  realm  of  dreams."^ 
"  If  you  lend  a  peasant  money  at  the  rate  of  18  per  cent, 
interest,  you  have  proved  yourself  a  benefactor  whom  he 
will  gratefully  remember  to  the  end  of  his  days.  The  very 
notion  of  a  bank  that  would  be  satisfied  with  12  per  cent, 
a  year  appears  to  him  in  the  light  of  an  idle  dream. "'^  In 
some  districts  of  the  government  of  Koorsk  it  has  become  a 
regular  custom  for  whole  communities  to  borrow  money  for 
the  payment  of  the  taxes  at  60  per  cent,  interest.  But  this 
is  rather  exceptional.  100  per  cent,  is  the  ttsual  rate  of 
interest;  it  often,  however,  amounts  to  300,  sometimes  to  800 
per  cent}  Among  the  usurers  whom  the  peasants  honestly 
look  upon,  or  think  they  look  upon,  as  benefactors,  there 
is  one  well-known  individual  named  Lebedeff,  in  the  gov- 
ernment of  Pskoff,  who  is  quite  satisfied,  when  he  lends 
money,  to  receive  100  per  cent,  interest.  "What  a 
wretched  existence  must  be  led  by  peasants  who,  in  very 
truth,  see  reason  to  bless  such  a  man  as  their  benefactor!  " 
exclaims  the  ofiicial  investigator.^  The  money  borrowed 
on  such  conditions  is  needed  and  employed  mainly  to  ])ay 
the  taxes,  "which  are  always  collected  with  inexorable 
severity."" 

The  pressure  brought  to  bear  upon  the  necessitous  hus- 
bandmen must  indeed  be  great,  when  we  find  them  "quite 

1  Cf.  Laiv  Messenger,  November,  1890,  p.  377,  foil. 

2  The  (Russian)  Observer,  1884,  No.  11,  and  1885,  No.  2. 
8  Messenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  763. 

4  Ibid.  p.  765.  5  loid.,  loc.  cit.  6  ihid.  p.  763. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  22/ 

ready  in  extreme  cases  to  pay  1,200  per  cent  a  year."^ 
Nor  is  this  by  any  means  the  maximum;  those  who  are 
curious  to  read  cases  of  money  being  advanced  to  peasants 
at  2,500  per  cent,  interest  will  find  them  described  in  the 
most  widely  circulated  newspaper  of  Russia."  These  exor- 
bitant rates  of  interest  are  rendered  doubly  ruinous  by  the 
dishonesty  of  the  usurer  and  the  ignorance  of  the  borrower. 
A  peasant  borrows,  say,  ;^io,  signs  a  receipt  for  ^50,  pays 
the  high  annual  or  monthly  charges  regularly,  never  receiv- 
ing any  written  acknowledgment;  and  after  having  paid 
£,^^  or  ;^6o  finds  to  his  amazement  that  he  still  owes  more 
than  before.  A  whole  commune  of  the  government  of  Mos- 
cow borrowed  ^14  in  this  manner  at  2iZ  P^r  cent,  interest, 
and  in  the  course  of  twelve  years  fully  paid  up  the  capital 
sum  and  ;^i6o  interest  besides,  and  yet,  at  the  end  of  that 
time,  strange  to  say,  not  only  was  the  debt  not  wiped  out, 
but  it  had  increased  threefold.^ 

Such  is  part  of  the  curious  mechanism  by  which  Russia's 
finances  are  being  mobilized.  These  things  take  place  not 
in  any  one  district  or  government,  but  throughout  the 
length  and  breadth  of  the  Empire.  In  the  government  of 
Tver,  for  example,  we  have  it  on  the  authority  of  the 
official  statistician,  that  two-thirds  of  the  taxes  are  yearly 
borrowed  thus  of  private  usurers  by  the  needy  peasants. 
Is  not  this  in  sober  truth  a  burning  of  the  dwelling-house 
by  its  inmates  who  warm  themselves  at  the  fire,  to  their 
intense  comfort  at  first,  but  to  their  irremediable  ruin  in 
the  end? 

The  usurer,  when  not  a  blessed  benefactor  like  Lebedeff 
of  Pskoff,  constitutes  a  type  apart  in  the  Chamber  of  Hor- 
rors of  the  Russian  Empire.  It  is  needless  to  state  that  he 
is  not  a  Jew;  he  is  as  Orthodox  as  the  Metropolitan  Isi- 
dore, as  loyal  as  an  official  of  the  secret  police.  The  very 
worst  Jewish  usurer  in  Russia  is  to  the  ordinary  Russian 
koolak^  as  Antonio  is  to  Shylock.  In  winter  when  food  is 
lacking  and  work  cannot  be  had,  the  peasant  sells  to  this 
man  for  a  mere  song  the  harvest  still  hidden  in  the  womb 
of  the  earth,  and  buys  it  back  in  a  few  months  at  a  much 

1  Messenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  763. 

2  Cf.,  for  instance,  the  Novoye  Vremya,  3rd  November,  1890.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  these  are  very  exceptional  cases ;  it  would  be  much  more  satis- 
factory, however,  if  they  were  not  facts. 

3  Alessenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  764. 

4  The  technical  name  for  peasant  usurers  who  are  members  of  the 
Orthodox  Church.    The  etymological  meaning  of  the  word  isfsi. 


228  RUSSIAN    TKAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

higher  price,  to  feed  his  own  family,  the  transactions  being 
carried  on  mainly  by  means  of  ruinous  i)romissory  notes. 
The  usurer,  however,  deals  in  force  as  well  as  matter,  and 
purchases  with  the  same  readiness  the  peasant's  future 
labor,  and  the  i)resent  jiroduce  of  his  farm.  Many  wretches 
who  borrowed  ^'5  or  ^6  and  repaid  it  several  times  over, 
are  often  forced  to  sell  their  labor  for  the  ensuing  harvest 
and  end  by  toiling  and  moiling  for  a  number  of  years  in 
the  service  of  their  "benefactor."  One  of  the  curious 
trades  that  has  sprung  into  existence  owing  to  these  strange 
economic  conditions  is  currently  called  the  "soul  trade." 
"In  numerous  districts,"  we  are  informed  by  the  most  seri- 
ous of  all  Russian  organs,  "a  new  right  of  possessing  serfs 
has  come  to  be  established.  Ihe  slave-owners  are  no  longer 
the  landlords,  as  before;  they  arc  now  the  owners  of  public- 
houses,  usurers,  coarse  half-civilized  grabbers  who  ruin  the 
people  with  relentless  logic."'  'Ihis  curious  phenomenon 
is  observable  in  all  parts  of  Russia,  north,  south,  east,  and 
west.- 

in  all  Russia  there  are  over  seven  hundred  districts  and 
in  one  district  alone,  though  I  cannot  venture  to  say  it  is  a 
tyi)ical  one,^  the  registered  debts  of  the  ])easants  amount  to 
two  millions  and  a  half  (roubles),  of  which  over  one  and  a 
half  are  owing  to  money-lenders.  The  interest  paid  on  this 
debt  is  equal  to  three  times  the  sum  of  the  imperial  taxes. 
These  debtors  are  compelled  to  work  for  their  creditors, 
and  they  are  deprived  of  the  right  to  sell  to  any  but  to 
them,  and  dare  not  complain  of  the  oppression  to  which 
they  are  subjected,  of  false  weights  and  measures,  extor- 
tion, etc.  And  this  same  phenomenon  is  observable  in  the 
most  widely  distant  parts  of  Russia.  The  lenders  juofit  by 
the  ignorance  of  the  peasants,  who  as  a  rule  can  neither 
read  or  write;  they  do  not  return  them  their  promissory 
notes  and  frequently  sue  them  several  times  for  one  and 
the  same  sum,  on  the  same  notes  of  hand.^ 

German  physicians  tell  us  that  the  disease  known  in 
Russia  as  scrofula  is  in  reality  malignant  syphilis.  In  like 
manner,  the  transactions  usually  called  credit  in  Russia 
are  for  the  most  part,  in  sober  truth,  a  masked  buying  and 
selling  under  conditions  that  render  the  purchaser,  to  all 

1  Messenger  of  Europe,  November,  1890,  p.  762. 

2  Cf.  The  Day,  6th  M.irch,  1888. 

3  The  Opotschctski  district  of  the  government  of  Fakoff. 
<  Messenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  765. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  229 

intents  and  purposes,  a  criminal,  and  the  vendor  a  victim. 
For,  suppose  the  average  income  of  a  peasant-farmer  to 
amount  to  6  or  even  lo  per  cent,  on  the  capital  invested 
(that  it  is  usually  far  less  will  be  made  clear  enough  later 
on) :  nay,  let  us,  for  the  sake  of  argument,  put  it  down  as 
20  per  cent. :  —  how  can  that  individual  borrow  money  at 
100,  400,  or  800  per  cent,  with  the  serious  intention  of 
paying  capital  and  interest  out  of  his  income?  It  is  not 
evident  that  he  intends  —  or  must  be  taken  to  intend  —  to 
refund  it  out  of  his  property,  so  that  he  is  really  the  vendor 
of  his  property,  and  his  creditor  the  purchaser?  In  many 
cases,  however,  tlie  borrower's  property  is  insufficient  to 
wipe  out  the  debt,  or,  if  not  really  insufficient,  is  tempo- 
rarily depreciated  until  it  becomes  so.  In  such  cases  the 
borrower  must  make  good  by  labor  the  sum  which  the  sale 
of  his  property  has  left  unpaid.  The  official  representative 
of  the  Imperial  Economical  Society,  who  very  lately  inves- 
tigated this  and  kindred  questions  and  presented  his  report 
to  the  Minister  of  the  Interior  and  the  Finance  Minister, 
makes  several  statements  concerning  the  condition  of  the 
peasantry  that  are  characterised  by  that  wild  improbability 
which  so  often  distinguishes  facts  from  fiction.  "  In  one 
village  ^  the  whole  commune  begged  me,  some  on  their 
bended  knees,  many  in  tears,  to  request  the  Imperial  So- 
ciety to  rescue  them  from  utter  ruin.  And  when  I  drove 
away  I  could  see  for  miles,  until  the  village  itself  was  lost 
to  view,  the  entire  commune  still  standing  rooted  to  the 
spot  without  caps  or  hats."  " 

To  what  extent,  one  may  ask,  should  the  Government  be 
held  responsible  for  the  miserable  condition  of  the  peas- 
antry? It  is  not  my  purpose  to  draw  up  an  indictment 
against  a  political  body  composed  of  the  most  heterogene- 
ous elements  conceivable,  and  still  less  to  condemn  a  min- 
ister whom  many  regard,  and  not  without  reason,  as  a 
financial  Hercules  absurdly  employed  in  spinning  wool  for 
an  inappreciative  Omphale,  a  Russian  Necker  condemned  to 
play  the  undignified  part  of  a  flippant  Calonne,  to  raise  the 
wind  and  allay,  for  a  brief  moment,  well-founded  fears  and 
just  apprehensions.  At  the  same  time  it  is  impossible  to 
blink  the  fact  that  Russian  credit  and  Russian  solvency 
have  been   made   wholly  dependent,    not   only  upon   the 

1  Ploskoff. 

-  Peasant  Proprietorship  in  the  Porkhofski  District  of  the  Government  of 
Pskoff.     By  G.  P.  Sazonoff,  St.  Petersburg,  1890. 


230  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

intemperance  and  stanation  of  the  peasantry,  which  are 
truly  sore  evils,  but  also  upon  "the  prostitution  of  his 
mind,  the  soddening  of  his  conscience,  the  dwarfing  of  his 
manhood,  which  are  worse  calamities."  More  than  a  third 
of  the  ordinary  imperial  revenue,  over  275  millions,  is 
made  up  of  excise  duties  on  alcohol,  in  the  enormous  con- 
sumption of  which  the  Government  cannot  and  will  not 
allow  any  falling  off.^  The  sober  i)casant  is  looked  at 
askance;  and  an  insinuation  that  he  is  disloyal  or  heretical 
is  sometimes  enough  to  ruin  him.  Now  the  retailers  of 
liquor,  the  men  whose  business  is  the  most  lucrative  of  any 
other  in  Russia,  are  also  the  money-lending  "  benefactors" 
described  above.  A  government  truly  desirous  of  filling 
its  coffers  could  not  well  quarrel  with  its  chosen  instru- 
ments, and  so  the  publicans,  not  being  hateful  Jews,  are 
tolerated,  nay,  deliberately  encouraged:  vodka  is  briskly 
sold  and  the  needful  253^  millions  flow  rapidJy  in;  and 
thus,  if  the  lambs  are  not  precisely  whole  and  intact,  the 
wolves  at  least  are  satiated. 

The  misery  of  the  peasants,  it  may  be  urged,  is  in  great 
part  attributable  to  their  crass  ignorance,  the  vast  majority 
of  them  being  almost  as  benighted  as  the  six  score  thousand 
persons  in  Nineveh  who  could  not  discern  between  their 
right  hand  and  their  left  hand.  But  this  ignorance,  it 
should  not  be  forgotten,  is  a  condition,  to  the  full  as  in- 
dispensable to  the  success  of  the  financial  policy  of  the 
(iovernment  as  the  action  of  the  i)ublican  and  the  money- 
lender; for  an  educated  peasantry,  like  the  Finnish,  would 
very  soon  adopt  temperate  habits  of  life,  thus  ruining  the 
imperial  budget,  and  would  probably  grow  restive  under 
misrule;  so  that  the  economical  catastroi)he  might  prove 
but  the  prelude  to  a  political  cataclysm.  Hence  the  mar- 
vellous energy  with  which  education  in  every  sha]ie  and 
form  is  being  suppressed.  "In  the  entire  Porkhofski  dis- 
trict ^30  a  year  is  spent  in  schools,  six  cantons  contribu- 
ting small  sums  to  this  total,  and  the  remaining  twenty-three 


1  In  1880  the  excise  duty  on  spirits  amounted  to  223^  millions;  in  1889 
it  reached  the  figure,  275  niillions,  that  is  to  say  in  nine  years  it  increased 
by  51J  millions,  or  about  23  per  cent.,  notwithstanding  the  enormous 
increase  in  the  excise  duty,  an  increase  of  more  than  32  per  cent.  These 
figures,  however,  arc  far  fiom  showing  what  the  real  annual  consumption  of 
alcohol  in  Russia  is;  for  there  is  a  very  extensive  contraband  trade  in  liquor, 
besides  a  great  deal  of  secret  distilling  going  on  throughout  the  country. 
This  is  natural  enough  when  we  reflect  that  the  excise  duty  on  alcoholic 
liquors  is  equivalent  to  si.x  and  even  seven  times  the  cost  of  producing  it. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE,  23 1 

subscribing  nothing  at  all.  In  several  villages  of  that 
district  (I  am  speaking  of  places  within  two  or  three  hours 
of  the  capital)  there  ts  not  a  man,  woman,  or  child  who 
can  read  or  write,  and  every  time  an  official  document  is 
received  from  the  Peasant  Board  (or  elsewhere)  a  special 
messenger  has  to  be  despatched  to  a  neighboring  town  to 
seek  for  some  one  to  decipher  it."  ^  And  yet  in  that  same 
district  there  are  seven  hundred  taverns  and  public-houses 
7vith  a  yearly  turnover  of  tivo  million  I'oubles.  Many  of 
these  taverns  were  opened  against  the  express  will  of  the 
peasantry,  who  unanimously  passed  emphatic  resolutions 
forbidding  them;  but  the  Government  not  only  refused  to 
sanction  the  will  of  the  village  communities,  but  actually 
installed  the  publicans  by  force.  One  instance,  chosen  for 
its  typical  features,  will  suffice  to  give  an  idea  of  how  the 
struggle  between  drunkenness  and  temperance  is  carried  on. 

Eighteen  months  ago  the  community  of  Ploskovo  unani- 
mously resolved  to  allow  in  their  village  neither  public- 
house  nor  publican.  In  pursuance  of  this  determination 
scores  of  peasants  armed  with  staves  and  clubs  stood  on 
guard  at  the  entrances  of  the  village,  relieving  each  other 
by  day  and  by  night.  They  refused  to  entertain  any  of  the 
alluring  promises  of  the  publican,  and  resolutely  drove  him 
away  whenever  he  attempted  to  enter  the  village.  This 
state  of  things  continued  for  several  days,  until  at  last  the 
police  authorities  arrived  escorting  the  publican  in  solemn 
procession  and  installing  him  by  force  in  the  village. - 
The  result  is  not  in  all  respects  as  satisfactory  as  even  an 
easy-going  Russian  Government  would  desire.  "In  the 
village  of  Goloobtseff,"  says  the  Messenger  of  Europe, 
"  fires  broke  out  six  different  times  this  year,  and  each  time 
nearly  all  the  peasants  were  blind  drunk."  ^ 

The  schools,  which  are  at  least  as  effectual  preventives 
of  the  reign  of  intemperance  as  clubs  and  staves,  are  being 
suppressed  with  equal  energy  to  that  manifested  in  the 
opening  of  taverns;  for  the  ignorance  and  drunkenness  of 
the  peasantry  are  the  exact  correlative  of  the  temporary 
solvency  of  the  Government.  ''It  is  unjust,"  we  are  told 
by  an  authority  on  these  questions,  "to  blame  the  peasants 
for  the  Cimmerian  darkness  that  prevails  in  the  country. 


1  Official  Report  of  G.  P.  Sazonoff. 

-  Ibid.     Cf.  also  Messenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  778. 

3  Messenger  of  Europe,  September,  1890,  p.  360. 


232  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

The  Zemstvos  opened  and  endowed  hundreds  of  schools, 
making  no  inconsiderable  sacrifices  to  get  the  children  of 
the  peasants  instructed,  but  the  Government  of  the  present 
Emperor  has  worked  hard  to  undo  all  that  the  Zemstvos 
had  accomplished.  Numbers  of  schools  were  closed  as 
unnecessary,  hundreds  were  handed  over  to  the  clergy,  who 
have  not  time  to  attend  even  to  their  parochial  duties,  and 
consequently  maintain  the  schools  on  paper  only;  and  the 
last  act  of  this  policy  of  suppression  is  enshrined  in  the 
ukase  published  three  weeks  ago,  subjecting  all  Zemsky 
schools  to  the  clergy,  and  forbidding  the  opening  of  new 
ones  without  the  authorization  of  the  clergy,  which  they 
have  orders  not  to  accord."^ 

In  the  government  of  ^'olhynia,  on  the  borders  of  Austria, 
the  inhabitants  are  composed  of  Russians,  Jews,  Germans, 
and  Bohemians.  Among  the  three  latter  nationalities  there 
is  practically  not  one  who  cannot  read  and  write;  while  for 
every  one  Russian  who  can  do  either  there  are  eighty-five 
who  can  neither  write  nor  read.  The  facility  with  which 
these  unfortunate  Russians  fall  a  prey  to  every  scheming 
swindler  that  comes  along  almost  transcends  limits  of  credu- 
lity. The  communes  often  agree  to  purchase  land,  when 
their  own  is  insufificient  for  their  wants,  in  the  hope  that 
the  State  Bank,  founded  with  this  object,  will  advance  the 
entire  sum,  and  ignorant  of  the  circumstances  that  the  rules 
of  the  Bank,  which  they  possess  but  are  unable  to  discipher, 
allow  only  a  certain  percentage  of  the  ])urchase-money  to 
be  advanced.  This  tardy  discovery  frequently  forces  them 
to  abandon  their  intention  of  purchasing  and  to  forfeit  the 
earnest  money  paid  to  the  landowner.  In  the  government 
of  Pskoff,  for  instance,  there  is  a  well-known  farmer  —  a 
nobleman  —  who  regularly  sells  his  estate  every  year  in  this 
lucrative  if  unscrupulous  tvay.  More  tlian  once  he  has 
received  ^130  earnest-money  from  the  imsusi)erting  peas- 
ants, which  they  ultimately  forfeited  from  inability  to  com- 
plete the  transaction. - 

But  to  return  to  the  economic  condition  of  the  peasantry, 
it  is  highly  characteristic  of  the  pressing  need  of  the  (iov- 
ernment  that  distraint  of  property  for  non-payment  of  the 
taxes  frequently  "  takes  place  long  before  the  arrival  of  the 
term  fixed  by  law  for  that  payment.     All  the  auctions,  for 


1  Cf.  Messenger  of  Europe,  September,  1890,  p.  362,  363. 

2  St.  Petersburgs'kia  Veydomosti,  1888. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  233 

instance,  that  took  place  for  non-payment  of  taxes  for  the 
first  half  of  18S9  were  arranged  in  the  spring  of  that  year, 
although  the  term  fixed  by  the  law  for  the  payment  of  the 
taxes  was  the  12th  of  July.  These  premature  and  obviously 
illegal  sales  of  peasants'  homesteads  are  authorized  witli- 
out  the  slightest  difficulty  and  with  unusual  promptitude; 
sometimes  permission  is  granted  on  the  very  day  it  is  asked 
for,  although  it  is  a  question  of  a  whole  series  of  villages 
described  and  valued  on  forty  sheets  of  foolscap  paper. 
Under  this  curious  system  the  ruin  of  a  large  number  of 
peasants'  homesteads  and  families  is  effected  sufficiently 
easily  and  promptly,  even  tvhere  there  are  no  arrears  what- 
ever.'" "Whole  farms  with  complete  inventories  are 
knocked  down  by  the  auctioneer  for  £6.  From  this  it  is 
easy  to  infer  the  prices  realized  by  the  sale  of  movable 
property.  The  last  cow,  the  last  horse,  is  sold  literally  for 
a  penny."  ^  It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  these  are  the 
deliberate  statements  of  a  responsible  official,  sent  to  study 
the  question  on  the  spot,  not  the  rhetorical  flourishes  of  a 
Russian  Liberal  newspaper. 

But  has  not  every  Russian  peasant  the  right  of  appeal? 
Have  we  not  been  told  by  an  English  Radical  that  the 
Russian  peasant  is  far  better  cared  for  and  lives  a  much 
happier  life  than  his  English  brother?  To  this  there  are 
many  convincing  replies.  The  following  statement  gives  a 
sufficiently  clear  inkling  of  their  drift:  —  "It  occasionally 
happens  that  the  peasants  .  .  .  who  feel  that  this  prema- 
ture distraint  is  illegal,  protest  and  earnestly  petition  for  a 
few  days'  grace,  but  the  upshot  of  it  is  that  they  are  prose- 
cuted for  resistance  to  the  authorities."  ^  That  is  what  hap- 
pened to  the  peasants  of  the  village  of  Pessok  who  were 
ill-advised  enough  to  protest;  in  the  Porkhofski  district  the 
peasants  who  made  the  same  protests  were  put  on  trial, 
found  guilty,  and  condemned.^ 

It  would  be  rash  and  uncharitable  to  accuse  M.  Vyshne- 
gradsky  of  deliberate  complicity  in  these  crimes;  for  it  is 
difficult  to  call  them  by  any  other  names.  The  fact  is  that 
he  deals  only  in  general  results:  it  is  his  underlings  who 
pass  beyond,  not  only  the  comparatively  narrow  bounds  of 
decency  and  humanity,  but  the  broader  limits  of  Russian 


1  See  Sazonoff's  Official   Report,  &c.     Cf.  also  Messenger  of  Europe, 
October,  1890,  pp.  779,  780. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  p.  780.  3  Ibid. 


234  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

Statute  law.  Qui  vult  fiiiem  viilt  media  is  a  scholastic  saw- 
that  continues  to  hold  good  even  in  these  days  of  enlight- 
enment. In  Russia,  however,  the  parts  are  cunningly 
divided,  the  Government  wishing  the  end,  and  its  under- 
lings the  means,  of  attaining  it.  Still  it  is  discouraging  to 
learn  that  "  this  premature  and  energetic  collection  of  the 
taxes  usually  calls  forth  eulogies  from  the  authorities.  .  .  . 
It  does  not  occur  to  any  one  that  for  the  sake  of  preventing 
arrears  in  the  present,  the  \ery  sources  of  payment  in  the 
future  are  being  annihilated."  ^  The  condition  of  the  peas- 
ants is  truly  harrowing  in  the  extreme.  The  official  report 
of  M.  Sazonoff  quoted  above  says  of  the  Porkhofski  dis- 
trict (not  far  from  the  government  of  St.  Petersburg),  "The 
greater  part  of  the  peasants  supi)ort  themselves  with  the 
greatest  imaginable  difficulty,  and  even  then  only  to  the 
extent  of  keeping  themselves  from  dying  of  hunger.  To 
feed  their  cattle  they  had  recourse  to  the  traditional  mediod 
—  taking  down  the  roofs  of  their  huts  and  of  all  the  out- 
houses on  the  farms,  not  sparing  even  such  thatched  roofs 
as  were  ten  years  old.  In  Zapolya  and  Krivookha  scarcely 
a  roof  was  left  standing.  Of  course  the  cattle  died  in 
great  numbers."-  Many  jieasants  went  about  the  country 
iDegging  for  alms  for  Christ's  sake.'' 

From  peasant  proprietorship  to  professional  mendicancy 
is  a  terrible  fall;  but  there  are  far  deeper  and  darker 
abysses  than  even  that,  into  which  the  Russian  peasantry 
are  being  precipitated  by  tens  of  thousands.  Numbers  of 
them  become  serfs,  are  seized  upon  by  the  cruel  "soul- 
dealer"  or  dessa/nik,  who  purchases  at  nominal  prices  the 
future  labor  of  hungry  men  and  women. 

"  In  spring  these  dessa/iiiks  drive  whole  bands  of  agricultural  labor- 
ers to  forests  destined  to  be  turned  into  pasture  lands,  to  river-banks  to 
tug  vessels  like  horses,  and  to  various  factories,  having  previously  re- 
sold them  to  large  employers  of  labor  for  double  or  treble  the  prices 
they  themselves  paiil.  Other  dealers  scour  the  villages  and  hamlets,  in 
search  of  children,  w/ioin  they  buy  up  -wholesale.  Many  needy  parents 
sell  their  children  for  several  years  to  these  men  for  a  trifle.  Having 
purchased  a  score  or  two  of  children  in  this  way,  the  dealer  forwards 
them  on  in  tutnbrih  to  St.  Petersbitrg,just  as  cutde-dealers  hate  calves 
conveyed  to  town.  In  St.  Petersburg  the  children  are  resold  for  double 
and  treble  the  money  to  manufacturers  and  shopkeepers.  To  this  same 
category  of  trade  in  human  labor  belongs  the  hiring  out  of  peasant 


1  Loc.  cil.,  p.  780. 

2  Messeni^er  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  770. 
^  Ibid. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  235 

labor  by  the  Volost  Board  to  the  agents  of  landowners,  to  timber- 
merchants,  and  the  owners  of  works,  who  journey  about  the  country 
specially  for  this  purpose,  visiting  even  the  remotest  districts  of  Russia. 
The  peasants  whose  labor  is  thus  summarily  disposed  of  are  generally 
individuals  unable  to  pay  the  taxes  in  time,  and  they  are  hired  out 
usually  without  their  consent."  ^ 

The  official  representative  of  the  Imperial  Economical 
Society  states  in  his  report  (1890)  that  he  saw  a  batch  of 
female  children,  of  from  six  to  seven  years  old,  walking 
gloomily  towards  the  fields.  "'Where  are  you  going?'  he 
asked  them.  'To  perform  corvee  (forced  service)  for  the 
master,'  they  replied,  with  a  far  from  childlike  calm; 
indeed  their  stolid  tranquillity  might  be  characterized  as 
imbecile.  'What  do  you  mean?  What  corvee  can  you 
have  to  do?  '  I  involuntarily  inquired.  '  To  the  fields  to 
perform  corvee  for  the  master.'  I  then  put  the  same  ques- 
tion to  an  adult  boy  and  girl  who  were  at  that  moment 
returning  from  the  fields,  and  I  got  the  same  apathetic 
reply.  'What  corvee  is  it?'  I  asked  the  Peasants'  As- 
sembly. '  Well,  that's  how  we  call  it,  old  and  young,'  was 
the  answer.  '  You  see  it's  what  used  to  be  before  the  serfs 
were  freed,  only  that  the  service  is  much  harder  now  that 
we  work  for  our  rich  benefactors'  {i.e.,  money-lenders)." - 
"  Such  phenomena  as  these  have  ceased  to  be  exceptional, 
and  threaten  to  become  the  universal  rule."^  The  sum 
total  of  work  performed  by  the  peasant  borrowers  is  enor- 
mous; "the  peasants  now  work  for  others  not  less  than  four 


1  Cf.  P.  A.  Sokolovski,  Savings  Bank  Associations,  St.  Petersburg,  18S9, 
pp.  23,  24.  The  Messenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  762.  No  statement 
is  advanced  in  this  paper,  or  any  of  the  series,  without  references  to  some 
of  the  British  authorities  who  are  responsible  for  it,  and  to  the  official  report, 
whenever  it  is  based  upon  Governmental  sources.  Tliis  being  so,  the  wild 
accusations  of  exaggeration  launched  by  certain  English  periodicals  steadily 
professing  Autonomy  and  Radicalism,  are  in  reality  tantamount  to  accusa- 
tions of  shameless  lying  preferred  against  the  very  Government  they  are  so 
anxious  to  defend.  It  may  interest  these  gentlemen  to  learn  that  a  certain 
foreign  Government  instructed  its  ambassador  in  St.  Petersburg  to  make 
diligent  inquiries  into  the  trutli  of  certain  statements  that  seemed  greatly 
exaggerated  in  the  papers  on  "  Russian  Prisons"  and  on  "  Russian  Jews  " 
that  form  chapters  in  this  volume.  The  ambassador,  after  having 
thoroughly  sifted  the  evidence  brought  forward  in  The  Fortnightly  Revieiv, 
and  a  great  deal  more  that  was  never  published,  reported  to  his  Govern- 
ment that  the  alleged  facts  were  perfectly  true,  and  were  understated  rather 
than  exaggerated.  It  is  earnestly  hoped  that  the  statements  put  forward  in 
this  chapter  may  be  subjected  to  a  similar  test. 

2  G.  P.  Sazonoff,  Peasant  Proprietorship  in  the  Porkhofski  District  of  the 
Government  of  Pskoffi'^^.  189,  190. 

■  3  Messenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  763. 


236  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

days  a  7veck,  that  is  to  say,  more  than  when  serfdom 
existed." ' 

But  why  do  not  these  little  "brown  sheep,"  as  an  I'higlish 
journalist  calls  the  peasants,  appeal  to  the  law  or  to  the 
Emperor,  who  surely  cannot  sanction  such  inhuman  tran- 
sactions as  these  which  amount  to  white  slavery  of  the  worst 
possible  description,  in  comparison  with  which  West-End 
sweating  is  just  and  generous?  Is  he  not  the  loving  head- 
shepherd  of  (iatchina?  The  answer  is  clear,  if  not  pre- 
cisely consoling.  A  few  years  ago  a  law  was  framed  to 
meet  precisely  such  cases;  and  the  terms  of  the  law  are 
these.  A  peasant  may  enter  into  a  contract  to  hire  out  his 
labor  for  as  many  as  five  years.  The  conditions  to  which 
hunger  or  drunkenness  forced  him  to  give  his  assent  are 
rigorously  maintained  by  the  law,  which  in  all  matters 
touching  upon  the  enforcement  of  such  contracts  dis- 
penses with  the  usual  formalities  and  delays.  "The  death 
of  the  employer,"  adds  the  statute  significantly,  "has  not 
the  effect  of  suspending  or  abrogating  the  force  of  the  con- 
tract, but  merely  transfers  the  rights  and  obligations  of  the 
deceased  to  his  lawful  heirs."  This  law  sounds  as  if  it  had 
been  framed  by  a  personal  enemy  of  the  good  shepherd 
of  Gatchina. 

The  ease  with  which,  in  writing  of  an  immense  country 
like  Russia,  symptoms  of  merely  local  distress  may  be 
unconsciously  magnified  into  universal  misery,  makes  it 
incumbent  ujjon  those  who  desire  to  arrive  at  right  conclu- 
sions to  scrutinize  most  carefully  the  facts,  and  above  all 
not  to  confound  a  district  or  a  government,  however  large, 
with  the  Russian  lunpire.  Nor  should  there  be  any  hesi- 
tation about  a])plying  other  and  more  rigorous  tests.  Thus 
if  want  and  misery  be  as  widespread  in  Russia  as  many 
])ul)licists  of  that  country  would  have  us  believe,  the  inevi- 
table results  should  be  as  evident  as  the  statement  is  clear; 
fierce  famine  would  stalk  through  the  empire;  blackening 
masses  of  miserable  wretches  would  be  met  ,vith  wandering 
through  the  weary  wastes  of  that  mournful  land;  fierce  fires 
would  fringe  with  lurid  light  the  long  aisles  of  the  forest 
and  the  lanes  between  the  well-stocked  farmhouses;  the 
])eo])le,  however  patient,  would  rise  u])  against  the  authori- 
ties, and  chaos  itself  would  seem  to  be  (luickening  in  the 
womb  of  time.     Do  we  see  anything  like  this  in  reality? 

1  L.  Slonimsky,  Messenger  0/ Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  765. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  23/ 

To  begin  with,  nothing  even  remotely  approaching  pros- 
perity is  visible  in  any  corner  of  the  empire.  Impoverish- 
ment dogs  Protection  like  its  shadow.  The  dimensions  of 
the  want  and  suffering  may  be  accurately  gauged  without  a 
protracted  study  of  the  economical  conditions  of  Russia. 
The  question  reduces  itself  to  the  compass  of  a  sum  of 
addition  and  subtraction,  the  data  being  furnished  by  the 
official  organ  of  the  Russian  Ministry  of  Finances.  The 
statistics  of  the  prices  of  agricultural  produce  published  by 
that  ministry,  and  divided  into  four  sections  headed  rye, 
oats,  spring  wheat,  and  winter  wheat,  constitute  the  terrible 
writing  on  the  wall  that  warns  Russia  of  impending  eco- 
nomic ruin.  From  these  tables  it  appears  that  wheat  is  the 
only  crop  that  yields  an  income,  and  as  wheat-growing  is  a 
branch  of  agriculture  that  requires  the  concurrence  of 
many  rare  conditions,  it  is  absolutely  impossible  in  im- 
mense districts.  The  other  corn  crops,  rye  and  oats,  which 
are  raised  in  the  larger  half  of  the  corn-growing  region, 
show  a  deficit  varying  from  i  to  lo  roubles  a  dessateen  (2| 
acres)  during  the  most  favorable  years.^  On  the  other 
hand  it  is  an  established  fact  that  rye  and  oats  constitute 
40  per  cent,  of  all  the  corn  annually  exported  from  Russia. 
Half  the  corn-growers,  therefore,  work  for  the  foreigner 
not  only  gratis,  but  at  a  positive  loss  to  themselves.  "This 
explains,"*'  says  the  Novoye  Vremya,  "why  it  is  that  in  1887 
and  1888,  in  spite  of  abundant  harvests,  the  price  of  land 
not  only  did  not  rise,  but  continued  to  fall,  still  more 
rapidly  than  before,  while  the  indebtedness  of  the  farmers 
went  on  increasing,  as  we  see,  from  the  reports  of  the  Bank 
of  the  Nobility,  and  likewise  from  the  balance-sheets  of 
private  land-banks.  What,  then,  will  happen  in  a  bad 
year?"  -  The  present  year,  1890-1891,  has  proved  a  very 
bad  year,  no  less  by  reason  of  the  harvest,  for  in  many  dis- 
tricts there  was  a  very  great  falling  off  in  the  crops,  than 
on  account  of  the  considerable  rise  in  the  price  of  the 
rouble,  which  tells  so  terribly  against  the  export  trade,  that 
we  find  a  minister  of  M.  Vyshnegradsky's  intelligence  com- 
pelled to  resort  to  schoolboy  tricks  to  depreciate  in  winter 
his  own  Russian  rouble,  which  he  spends  spring,  summer, 
and  autumn  in  raising  as  near  as  possible  to  par.'' 

1  The  Messenger  of  Pittance,  Industry,  and  Trade,  13th  January,  1889. 

2  Novoye  Vremya,  17th  January,  1889. 

3  Cf.  Borsen-Courler  (Berlin), '29th  November,  1890;  the  Russkia  Veydo- 
viosti,  November,  1890,  etc. 


238  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

It  is  needless  to  descant  here  on  the  results  of  this  alarm- 
ing state  of  things.  They  are  inevitable.  Not  a  year  has 
passed  during  the  last  five  years  without  a  famine  break- 
ing out  in  large  corn-growing  districts,  which  carries  off  no 
man  knows  how  many  uncomi)lalning  wretches,  its  growth 
every  year  more  and  more  intense,  and  sjjreading  over  a 
much  wider  area.  Thus  in  1885  there  was  a  severe  famine 
in  the  government  of  Kazan,  which  decimated  the  popula- 
tion. A  public  subscription  was  opened  by  impecunious 
Russian  students,  who  themselves  cheerfully  contributed 
their  mites;  but  scarcely  had  the  facts  begun  to  be  bruited 
abroad  than  they  were  hushed  up  by  the  Government.  In 
1888  the  distress  became  extreme  in  the  governments  of 
Orenburg,  the  Volga  districts,  and  the  Southern  govern- 
ments;^ and  in  many  places  since  then  the  peasants  have 
learned  to  dispense  with  ordinary  bread,  and  to  live  on  a 
substitute  made  of  the  husks  of  rye  and  the  powdered  bark 
of  oak.^ 

The  har\'est  of  1890  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  complete 
failure,  and  yet  the  scarcity  of  food  in  most  of  the  govern- 
ments of  European  Russia  has  attained  the  proportions  of 
a  famine.  And  yet,  incredible  as  it  may  appear,  the  first 
concern  of  the  Russian  peasant  is  not  to  feed  his  family  or 
himself,  but  to  i)ay  his  taxes  and  perform  his  part  in  mobi- 
lizing the  finances  of  the  country,  even  though  he  should 
live  on  refuse  and  offal.'''  In  s\nie  of  this,  the  arrears  are 
accumulating  in  a  geometrical  ratio.  Distraint,  imprison- 
ment, flogging,  are  equally  fruitless.  Between  1883  and 
1886  the  arrears  of  imperial  taxes  alone  increased  by  more 
than  TOO  ])er  cent. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  determine  what  part  of  Russia 
suffers  most  from  the  want  of  seed  corn,  of  money,  of  food; 
from  cold,  hunger,  and  disease.  Take  the  Central  district, 
for  instance,  and  what  do  we  find?  "One  may  affirm,  with 
a  profound  conviction  of  the  truth  of  the  statement,  that 
both  landowners  and  peasants  are  extremely  impoverished, 
and  the  signs  of  impending  ruin  show  themselves  with  pain- 
ful distinctness  to  every  impartial  observer.'"*     In  the  gov- 

1  Cf.  Svetf,  4th  April,  1888;  Crimean  Gazelle,  15th  March,  1888;  Odessa 
News,  24tli  April,  1888. 

^  A-foscow  Gazelle  [Afoskovskia  Veydomosti) ,  2m\  April,  1888,  and  April 
10,  1888.  Cf.  also  the  "  Petition  of  the  Imperial  Economical  Society,  St. 
Petersburg,  1890,"  p.  120  foil. 

8  Messenger  0/  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  777. 

4  Novoye  Vremya,  15th  February,  1889. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  239 

ernment  of  Nischny  Novgorod  the  harvest  last  year  was 
decidedly  bad,  and  the  peasants,  after  having  paid  their 
taxes,  were  left  with  nothing  to  sow.  "In  many  parts  of 
the  country  they  had  not  rye  enough  for  seed  for  the  fields. 
Half  of  the  district  had  eaten  its  corn."  '  In  October  and 
November  last  the  peasants  were  selling  their  live-stock  at 
ruinous  prices;  excellent  vyorking  horses  were  sold  in  large 
numbers  at  two  roubles  per  head.  In  the  government  of 
Tambov  the  authorities  have  had  to  come  to  the  peasants' 
assistance,  and,  lest  the  fields  should  be  waste,  advance 
them  a  loan  of  400,000  roubles  to  purchase  seed.^  A  similar 
story  reaches  us  from  the  government  of  Voronesh :  "The 
farmers  have  had  to  sell  their  live-stock  for  nominal  prices, 
and  whenever  they  received  no  offer,  to  kill  them  for  the 
meat  and  the  hides.  Colts  fetched  one  shilling  and  even 
as  little  as  sixpence  a  head,  and  during  several  weeks  meat 
in  the  markets  cost  less  than  one  farthing  a  pound." '^ 

In  the  West  the  distress  is  not  perhaps  quite  so  wide- 
spread, but  it  is  certainly  to  the  full  as  intense.  Thus  in  the 
government  of  Volhynia,  "there  is,"  we  are  assured,  "a  ter- 
rible crisis.  Even  wheat  (the  only  crop  that  has  been  cul- 
tivated at  a  profit  for  the  last  few  years)  is  cultivated  at  a 
considerable  loss.  The  material  condition  of  landowners 
is  extremely  critical."^  The  government  of  Vitebsk  is 
suffering  in  a  similar  way  from  similar  causes  by  a  com- 
plete stagnation  in  the  export  of  timber,  which  gave  sub- 
sidiary occupation  to  thousands  of  petty  farmers.  And,  as 
for  arrears  of  taxes,  it  is  wholly  out  of  the  question  to 
think  of  recovering  them.  ^  Polish  landowners  do  Aot  seem 
to  be  a  whit  better  off  than  their  Russian  colleagues;  owing 
to  last  year's  failure  of  the  crops  they  have  been  compelled 
to  sell  their  live-stock  to  purchase  food  for  their  families 
and  themselves.  Excellent  farm  horses  were  sold  in  large 
numbers  for  2s.  2d.  a  head.  The  consequence  is  that  there 
is  no  demand  for  hay  and  straw,  immense  quantities  of 
which  have  been  sold  for  almost  nothing  and  exported  to 
Prussia.  Now  the  peasants  themselves  have  nothing  to 
eat.*' 


1  Moscow  Gazette,  nth  December,  1889;  Novoye   Vrentya,  i^th  Decem- 
ber, 1889. 

-  Novoye  Vremya,  3rd  January,  1890. 

3  Ibid,  22nd  January,  1890. 

4  West  Slavonian  News,  25th  November,  1800. 

5  Ibid. 

6  Slavonian  Correspondence,  14th  December,  1889. 


240  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

In   the   South   uf    Russia,    hitherto    the    granary   of    tlie 
empire,  with  its  rich  black  loam  soil,  famous  throughout 
the  world,  want  and  misery  are  as  intense  as  in  the  North 
and   West.     To   begin  with,    last  year's  harvest   was  bad 
in  many  places,   although  abundant  in  other  parts  of  the 
country,  so  that  when  the  taxes  were  paid,  the  cattle  had 
no  fodder  and  the  peasant  no  food.'      In  large  districts  of 
the  government  of  Todolia,  where  the  harvest  was  likewise  a 
failure,  dearth  of  fodder  for  the  live-stock  and  of  food  for 
the  tiller  of  the  soil,  has  already  assumed  the  dimensions 
of  a  famine.     "There  are  no  hopes  now  that  the  winter 
crops  will  i)rosper,"  wrote  the  corresjiondents  sent  down  by 
the  press;  "the  position  of  landowners  and  land-tillers  is 
critical.     Landlords  who  a  short  time  ago  were  prosperous 
are    now   bankrupt."-     This   was   written   one   year   ago. 
Since    then    hunger  and  suffering   have   been   aggravated 
a  hundredfold  by  the  dire  results  of  the  bad  harvest  and 
the  utterly  unprei)ared  condition  of  the  population  to  meet 
the  blow.     In  the  Don  territory  numerous  bands  of  hungry 
peasants  are  to  be  continually  met  with,  who  have  come 
thither  from  various  districts  of  the  South,  in  the  fallacious 
hope  of  eking  out  a  few  roubles  by  working.     There  is  no 
work  to  be   had.      "Their  feet  protected  by  bast  shoes 
ijapti),  their  bodies  covered  with  tattered,  worn-out  smocks, 
miserable  wallets  thrown  over  their  shoulders,  these  new- 
comers have  ovcrflowetl  the  land.     They  wander  about  from 
house  to  house,  begging  for  a  crust  of  bread.     But  the  alms 
they  receive  could  not  possibly  still  the  cravings  of  hun- 
ger.'"'    From  the  government  of  Kherson  the  same  bitter 
lamentations  are   heard.     In  the  district  of    Odessa,    for 
instance,  the  peasants  were  never  before  in  such  terrible 
straits.     "You  come  across  whole  villages  the  inhabitants 
of  which  utterly  lack  bread  for   themselves,  food  for  their 
live-stock,  and  seed  for  the  fields.      The  imperial  and  other 
taxes   are  being  eollected  with   the   utmost  difficulty.     The 
communes  are  begging  for  a  little  respite,'  and  the  authori- 
ties have  also  been  entreated  to  give  or  lend  the  peasants 
some  corn  to  make  bread."'     The  order  in  which  these 
misfortunes  are  narrated  and  the  curious  climax  that  results 
are  well  worth  noting;  the  fact  that  fodder  and  food  are  as 


1  Novoye    Vremya,   19th  October,  1889 ;    Graschdanin,   30th   September 
1889. 

■■i  Ibid.  2ist  lanuarv,  1890.  ^  Ibid.  loth  August,  1890. 

3  Ibid.  29th  June,  1890.  '"  Ibid.  24th  January,  1890. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  24 1 

scarce  as  snow  in  midsummer,  and  the  horrors  of  a  famine 
have  begun  to  be  experienced,  is  rightly  looked  upon  as 
a  grievous  calamity.  Still  it  would  seem  not  to  be  the 
worst.  Far  more  severe  must  the  distress  be  if  the  taxes 
are  being  collected  with  difficulty;  for  whatever  other  hard- 
ships may  be  in  store  for  the  country,  the  finances  must  at 
all  costs  be  mobilized,  and  the  taxes  paid  up  to  the  last  far- 
thing. And  as  a  matter  of  fact  the  peasants  have,  in  many 
places,  given  everything  they  possessed  as  taxes,  afterwards 
lying  down  uncomplainingly  to  die.  In  the  Northern 
Caucasus  the  cattle  disease  has  been  raging  till  practically 
nothing  more  was  left  for  it  to  exercise  its  rage  upon;  in 
addition  to  which  the  grass  and  corn  crops  have  proved  a 
miserable  failure,  so  that  the  people  are  suffering  and  dying 
of  hunger  and  disease.^  The  same  story  reaches  us  from 
Mariapol,  where  a  bad  harvest  is  being  followed  by  a  period 
of  terrible  want.^ 

The  North  and  Northeast  of  Russia  is,  if  possible,  in  a 
still  worse  plight.  Writing  of  the  large  and  most  fertile 
district  in  the  government  of  Saratoff  —  Balasheff  —  the 
Novosti  assures  us  that  the  condition  of  the  peasantry, 
especially  in  the  northern  parts,  where  the  harvest  was 
wretched,  is  become  positively  intolerable.  Frightful  need 
is  everywhere  visible.  The  dearth  of  corn  for  subsistence, 
the  lack  of  work  and  wages,  the  scarcity  of  grass,  hay,  and 
straw,  and  the  absolute  necessity  of  paying  the  taxes,  con- 
cur to  ruin  —  nay,  to  exterminate,  the  peasants.  "Num- 
bers have  sold  their  live-stock,  and  many  have  gone  still 
further  and  sold  themselves  for  all  next  summer  and 
autumn."^  The  local  authorities  of  Saratoff  are  so  deeply 
moved  by  the  harrowing  scenes  they  daily  and  hourly  wit- 
ness that  they  have  resolved  to  ask  for  a  loan  of  200,000 
roubles  merely  to  keep  the  peasants  from  dying  of  sheer 
hunger  and  the  fields  from  lying  waste.'*  Many  of  the 
peasant  proprietors  have  managed  even  to  part  with  their 
land  in  the  hope  that  in  this  way  they  would  succeed  in 
shaking  off  the  burden  of  their  debts;  but  they  have  had 
all  their  trouble  in  vain,  for  though  they  no  longer  own 
they  still  continue  to  owe  as  much  as  before.^     The  govern- 

1  Niedielya,  14th  November,  1890. 

2  Movoye  Vremya,  31st  October,  1890. 

3  Novosti,  i8th  February,  1890. 

4  Niedielya,  9th  November,  1890. 

5  Novoye  Vremya,  26th  April,  1890. 


242  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

ment  of  Samara,  that,  with  due  care  and  reasonable  outlay, 
might  be  the  granary  of  Eastern  Russia,  is  as  badly  off 
as  that  of  Saratoff,  especially  the  Nikolaievsk  district.^ 
Vyatka,  the  government  that  boasts  the  most  enlightened, 
capable,  and  industrious  peasantry  in  all  Russia,  is  struck 
as  low  as  most  of  its  neighbors.  "Poverty,  robbery,  thiev- 
ing are  therefore  increasing  there  at  an  alarming  rate. 
Able-bodied  healthy  men,  well  able  to  work,  stroll  about 
the  country  pretending  to  be  deaf  and  dumb  in  order  to 
•  move  charitable  persons  to  give  them  alms.  .  .  .  Masses 
of  ragged,  half -starved  people  are  wandering  throughout 
the  country."^ 

The  government  of  Kazan  is  an  economic  ruin.  In  the 
year  1885,  as  we  said,  there  was  a  regular  famine  in  that 
vast  government,  the  people  lying  down  and  d)ing  of  hun- 
ger in  the  streets,  on  the  roadsides,  on  the  steps  of  houses. 
At  the  present  moment  we  have  the  best  possible  authority 
for  stating  that  the  ])opulation  is  undergoing  equal,  if  not 
still  greater,  hardships  than  in  1885.  It  is  a  (juestion  of 
issuing  a  loan  to  save  the  people  from  death,  and  that  there 
is  no  exaggeration  in  the  accounts  published  is  quite  evi- 
dent from  the  circumstance  that  the  Minister  of  the  Interior 
has  officially  admitted  that  there  are  ample  grounds  for  this 
extraordinary  measure.^  But  there  is  also  abundance  of 
other  testimony  to  be  had:  thus  the  Governor  of  Kazan 
sent  in  a  report  at  the  beginning  of  the  year,  in  which  an 
appalling  state  01  things  is  graphically  described.  In  one 
place,  for  instance,  two  hundred  families  of  a  thousand 
souls  were,  it  is  stated,  discovered  without  any  food  fit  for 
human  beings;  they  were  subsisting  upon  a  weed  known  as 
goosefoot  {Chenopodium).^  "Since  the  autumn  of  last 
year,"  we  read  in  another  account,  "there  has  been  a  fam- 
ine among  the  population  of  the  government  of  Kazan, 
It  is  strange  that  the  i)ress  should  remain  so  obstinately 
silent  concerning  it.  The  famine  of  five  years  ago,  which 
caused  such  a  profound  sensation,  was  not  a  whit  more 
intense  than  the  present."  ^  In  the  Troitsky  district  (^v- 
ernment  of  Orenburg)  the  dearth  of  corn,  hay,  grass,  etc., 
is  such  that  the  peasants  are  trying  —  one  may  easily  divine 


1  Novoye  Vremya,  3rd  July,  1890. 

2  Ibid.  8th  April,  1890. 

3  Ibid.  24th  January,  1890. 

4  Cf.  also  Novoye  i'veviya,  loth  January,  1890. 
6  Ibid.  lolh  April,  1890. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  243 

with  what  success  —  to  feed  the  cattle  on  the  foliage  of  the 
trees.* 

A  gifted  Russian  journalist,  M.  Nemirovitch-Dantshenko, 
journeyed  through  the  Volga  governments  investigating  the 
condition  of  the  peasants  there,  with  a  lively  faith  in  the 
inexhaustibility  of  Russia's  resources,  and  he  has  now  pub- 
lished a  book  on  the  subject.  His  verdict  is:  "Large 
numbers  of  people  are  dying  of  hunger.  If  my  wanderings 
impressed  me  with  a  vivid  notion  of  Russia's  immensity, 
they  completely  shattered  my  notions  of  her  abundance."  ^ 
The  peasants,  we  read  further,  are  compelled  in  winter  to 
work  in  factories  in  order  to  earn  a  miserable  subsistence, 
which  neither  their  own  land  nor  subsidiary  agricultural 
labor  affords  them. 

"  And  yet,  in  spite  of  all  that,  such  is  their  need,  that  to  purchase 
food,  they  have  had  to  sell  their  divelling-houses  as  fuel  for  the  furnaces 
of  the  zvorks,  while  they  betook  themselves  to  cages.  ...  It  is  scanda- 
lous that  St.  Petersburg  should  refuse  to  take  these  things  to  heart. 
Russia  might  be  ruined  for  all  St.  Petersburg  cares,  whose  sole  concern 
is  that  the  tax-paying  capacities  of  the  masses  should  suffice  for  the 
support  of  the  intelligent  and  governing  classes;  but  at  the  price  of 
what  bloody  sweat  these  taxes  are  earned,  it  recks  not  one  jot.^  .  .  . 
Suffering,  tortured,  ruined  people!  Who  will  stand  up  for  you?  It 
seems  as  if  there  were  no  crawling  thing  that  does  not  feed  upon  you ! 
My  conception  of  Russia  is  that  of  a  huge  giant  put  to  sleep  by  magic 
spells;  every  unclean  and  slimy  thing  has  meanwhile  crept  upon  him, 
every  species  of  vermin  is  continuously  gnawing  him  without  satisfying 
its  greed.  Lichens  are  on  him,  and  mosses  have  grown  over  him.  His 
body  is  stretched  out  upon  the  ground,  and  a  forest  has  grown  up 
around  him;  and  in  the  forest  God's  light  is  absent;  darkness  alone 
prevails."* 

It  is  only  a  couple  of  weeks  ago  since  the  Governor  of 
Ryazan,  one  of  the  most  flourishing  and  fertile  govern- 
ments of  Central  Russia,  forwarded  a  confidential  report  to 
the  Minister  of  the  Interior,  in  which  he  describes  the  con- 
dition of  the  peasants  as  almost  irremediable.  It  will  take 
years  of  very  great  solicitude  and  truly  paternal  govern- 
ment, he  says,  to  better  to  an  appreciable  extent  the  lament- 
able state  of  things  that  now  prevails  there.  The  peasants 
are  overwhelmed  with  arrears  of  taxes  and  rates,  with  loans 
and  debts.     Everyone  knows  what  an  all-important  part  is 


1  Niedielya,  12th  October,  1890. 

2  Nemirovitch-Dantshenko,    The  Kama  and  the    Ural,  St.  Petersburg, 
1890,  p.  191  (Russian). 

3  Ibid.  •*  Lac.  cit.,  p.  318. 


244  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

played  by  the  farm  horse  on  a  peasant's  farm,  especially  in 
a  country  like  Russia,  and  the  number  and  condition  of  the 
horses  is  generally  a  fair  index  of  agricultural  prosperity  or 
decay,  and  he  who  has  but  one  horse  now  will,  as  a  rule, 
have  none  next  year,  and  be  without  his  land  the  year  after. 
Now,  in  the  whole  government  of  Ryazan,  the  governor 
tells  us,  or  rather  tells  the  minister,  31  per  cent,  of  the 
peasant  proprietors  i)ossess  but  one  horse;  only  18  per 
cent,  possess  two  horses,  and  but  1 2  per  cent,  have  more 
than  two.  The  proportion  of  those  who  have  not  even  one 
horse  is  thirty-7iine  per  cent.,  and  there  are  26  per  cent, 
who  have  neither  horse  nor  cow,  nor  any  kind  of  live-stock 
whatever. 

The  only  possible  issue  out  of  the  difificulty  would  be  for 
the  peasant  to  obtain   subsidiary  employment,    and    thus 
compensate  to  some  extent  by  winter  work  for  heavy  agri- 
cultural losses.     I5ut,  as  1  have  already  stated,  that  is  now 
become    a    broken    reed.     Many    industrial    works    have 
wholly  disai)i)eared;  others  have  been  closed  for  a  time, 
and  the  number  of  hands  employed  has  everywhere  con- 
siderably diminished.     'Jhus  the  rise  in  the  duty  on  Eng- 
lish   coal    necessitated    the    closure    of    the    very    largest 
ironworks  in  South  Russia,  and  of  several  sugar  industries 
besides.     The    serious    industrial    crisis  in  the  extensive 
manufacturing  district  of  the  I'etrokovsky  government  is 
telling  most  heavily  on  the  petty  farmers  who  worked  there 
in  the  winter.^     The  linen  industry  is  positively  ruined; 
this  year  it  received  its  death-blow;  and  "not  merely  in 
the  government  of  Smolensk,  but  in  all  the  governments  in 
which  linen  manufactures  exist;  one  of  the  consequences 
is   that   the    peasants   engaged    in   this   industry   are    not 
receiving  even  half  of  their  normal  wages;  and  the  worst 
feature   in  the   matter   is  that  the   crisis   is  neither  tem- 
porary  nor    accidental.""      In    Krementschoog    and    the 
industrial    district  of  which  it  is  the  centre,  the  stagna- 
tion   in   business   and    industry    is   extreme,    "in    conse- 
quence of  which  one  hears  of  nothing  but  bankruptcies, 
failures,   etc.,    etc."^     In  Samara  similar  causes  produce 
similar  results,   and  the  depression    is    intense. •*     Sheep- 
breeding  and  the  industries  dependent  upon  it  are  like- 

1  Cf.  Novoye  Vremya,  isth  March,  1890. 

2  Ibid.  2gth  October,  1890. 

3  Ibid,  igtii  November,  1890. 

4  Ibid.  15th  January,  1890. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  245 

wise  rapidly  decaying  throiighout  the  country,  but  especially 
in  the  governments  of  Kharkoff,  Poltava,  Yekaterinoslav.^ 
The  result  is,  as  usual,  a  heavy  financial  crash.  Bank- 
ruptcies are  occurring  everywhere,  and  in  far  greater  num- 
bers than  heretofore.^ 

The  upshot  of  all  this  is  easier  to  imagine  than  to 
describe.  Mendicity  is  becoming  the  profession  of 
hundreds  of  thousands,  possibly  of  millions.  In  Nischny 
Novgorod  it  is  spreading  like  an  epidemic.^  Immense 
bands  of  heavy-hearted  lack-alls,  with  despair  in  their 
souls,  wander  disconsolately  through  the  land  eager  for 
work,  but  finding  none  to  do.  In  Kharkoff  we  read  of 
4,000  peasants  gathered  together  from  various  parts  of  the 
south  seeking  for  employment  of  some  kind,  and  seeking  in 
vain;^  much  more  numerous  bands  come  to  Astrakhan 
in  the  hope  of  being  put  in  a  way  of  earning  a  few  roubles 
for  their  hunger-stricken  families,  but  the  greater  number 
have  to  return  with  empty  hands,  one  band  of  these  doomed 
wretches  numbering  over  one  thousand  men.^  In  Nov- 
olsherkassk  the  same  distressing  spectacle  is  witnessed, 
and  one  company  of  over  a  thousand  peasants  returned 
home  travelling  hundreds  of  miles  for  nothing,  as  there 
was  nothing  for  them  to  mow  and  nothing  to  reap.  "  Many 
of  these  men,"  we  are  told,  "have  no  scythe,  reaping- 
hook,  or  wallet,  having  sold  these  things  and  every  other 
article  they  possessed.  Numbers  of  them  afifirm  that  for 
days  together  they  have  not  tasted  any  kind  of  food;  many 
of  them  are  ill,,  especially  the  youths  and  the  women. 
Every  day  fresh  bands  arrive  and  soon  return,  having  found 
nothing  whatever  to  do."  *"' 

No  people  in  the  world  are  so  patient  and  enduring  as 
the  Russian  peasantry,  whose  blind  obedience,  perfect 
resignation,  and  absence  of  care  about  what  the  morrow 
may  bring  forth  would  satisfy  the  "aspirations  and  realize  the 
ideals  of  St,  Francis  of  Assisi  or  Sakya  Muni.     Still  it  is 


1  Novoy^  Vremya,  24th  August,  1890. 

2  Ibid.  27th  February,  1890. 

3  I  speak  from  personal  knowledge  of  this  and  many  other  cases  men- 
tioned in  this  paper.  But  as  published  and  accessible  sources  of  informa- 
tion are  always  desirable  where  it  is  question  of  such  sensational  statements, 
I  at  all  times  endeavor  to  refer  the  reader  to  some  such.  In  this  case  I 
may  quote  the  Novoye  Vremya,  and  January,  1890. 

*  Ibid.  20th  April,  1890. 

5  Ibid. 

6  Novoye  Vremya,  gth  June,  1890, 


246  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

scarcely  to  be  wondered  at  if,  under  such  terrible  condi- 
tions, brought  face  to  face  with  inexorable,  i)itiless  fate, 
they  turn  and  toss  uneasily  from  side  to  side  like  the  groan- 
ing Encecladus,  unwittingly  shaking  the  empire  of  which 
they  are  the  foundation.  Moneyless,  friendless,  helpless, 
and  almost  hopeless,  the  Russian  peasantry  rise  up  every 
year  in  their  tens  of  thousands  and  migrate  to  the  south, 
to  the  west,  anywhere,  not  knowing  whither  they  are  drift- 
ing, nor  inquiring  nor  caring  what  fate  awaits  them. 
They  move  on  like  swarms  of  locusts  impelled  by  univer- 
sal causes  of  which  they  have  no  idea;  they  are  usually 
buoyed  up  by  a  vague  half-imconscious  feeling  that  they 
can  create  wealth  out  of  nothing,  that  in  their  new  abodes, 
with  a  little  fair  play,  they  will  be  somehow  enabled  to 
rise  again  more  marvellously  than  the  phoenix,  even  after 
their  ashes  have  been  swejit  away  by  the  four  winds  of 
heaven.  It  is  not  only  from  barren  soil  that  these  suffer^ 
ing  specimens  of  humanity  migrate;  fertility  of  the  land 
linked  to  hopeless  ruin  by  a  well-meaning  but  demoralized 
Government,  intent  merely  upon  mobilizing  its  finances, 
offers  no  inducement  to  the  hungry  ])easant  to  stay  and 
swell  the  number  of  victims  that  perish  yearly  of  famine. 
In  the  IJalashevsky  district  of  the  government  of  Saratoff, 
for  instance,  last  autumn,  five  thousand  peasants  threw  up 
their  land  and  houses  in  despair,  and  set  out  for  the 
unknown  east.^ 

Such  is  the  hopeless  misery  of  these  men;  we  are  told 
that  "their  condition  strikes  the  beholder  with  dismay."'-^ 
They  set  out  to  seek  for  fortune,  but  all  of  them  encounter 
hardship  and  misery  on  the  way,  many  meet  with  death, 
and  the  thousands  who  return  sorrow-laden,  and  seek  for 
work  in  their  native  places,  only  contribute  to  lower  the 
existing  prices  of  labor  and  to  ruin  others  without  benefit- 
ing themselves.  As  soon  as  the  navigation  was  opened 
last  May,  a  ghastly  multitude,  numbering  fifteen  thousand 
of  these  silent  accusers  of  a  religion  and  a  Government, 
arrived  in  Tiumen,  in  Siberia,  the  first  important  halting- 
place  on  the  weary  journey  to  the  Ivastern  Utopia.  There 
being  practically  no  steamers  to  take  them  on,  they  lived 
there  as  best  they  could  in  hopes,  which  (a  terrible  mor- 
tality breaking  out  among  them)  death  possibly  realized  for 

1  Grasc/idauin,  14th  August,  1889.  Cf.  also  Russian  Messenger,  Decem- 
ber, 1890,  p.  337. 

2  Northern  Messenger,  July,  1890,  p.  87, 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  24/ 

very  many  of  them,  and  life  bitterly  mocked  in  the  case  of 
the  rest.^  Large  numbers  had  to  live  in  the  open  air,  at  a 
time  when  the  frost  is  still  very  severe,  and  the  death  rate, 
caused  by  what  a  tell-tale  euphemism  describes  as  "anti- 
hygienic  conditions,"  grew  so  alarming  that  the  Governor 
of  Tobolsk  sent  a  telegram  to  the  Governor  of  Moscow 
requesting  him  to  stop  the  stream  of  migration  as  far  as 
depended  upon  the  chief  magistrate  of  the  chief  rallying- 
point  for  them  in  European  Russia.^  "One  has  only  to 
glance  at  these  tortured,  wind-beaten  faces,  and  at  the 
emaciated  bodies  covered  with  ragged  smocks,"  exclaims 
the  Astrakhan  Messenger,  describing  a  band  of  them 
gathered  together  in  that  city,  "in  order  to  understand 
what  agonies,  what  exquisite  sufferings  they  must  have 
endured  on  the  way  from  Nischny  Novgorod  to  Trans- 
Caucasia.  And  it  is  hard  to  say  what  awaits  them  after- 
wards, for  they  have  no  idea  what  place  they  are  going  to. 
.  .  .  The  only  hope  for  them  is  contained  in  the  fact  that 
they  cannot  be  much  worse  off  than  they  are.''^  "These 
living  skeletons  are  to  be  found  in  all  the  towns  and  cities 
on  the  Volga,  and  their  misery-stricken  aspect  is  enough  to 
wring  one's  heart."  * 

From  Tiumen  tens  of  thousands  of  them  move  into  the 
interior  in  steamers,  barges,  every  kind  of  vessel  that  floats, 
"the  absence  of  even  elementary  accommodation  manifest- 
ing itself  in  increased  mortality.^  Like  the  prisons,  the  barges 
always  take  far  more  than  they  can  accommodate,  so  that  on 
the  covered  deck  there  is  such  terrible  overcrowding  that 
th^  passengers  all  sleep  in  one  indiscriminate  heap."'' 
The  sick  and  suffering  always  constitute  a  numerous  body, 
for  in  the  absence  of  ventilation  disease  spreads  like  wild- 
fire. 

"  I  sometimes  went  in  and  cast  a  glance  at  the  berths  of  these  third- 
class  passengers,  but  hands,  arms,  legs,  feet,  heads,  boots,  bast  shoes, 
sheepskins,  sacks  and  bags  with  clothes  and  dry  bread  disclosed  them- 
selves to  my  view  as  one  formless  mass.  I  heard  the  helpless  moans  of 
sick  children,  one  of  whom  was  down  with  small-pox.  The  atmos- 
phere was  foitid  to  an  intolerable  degree :  it  would  positively  knock 
down  a  person  coming  straight  in  from  the  fresh  air.     Coffins  are  left 


1  The  Busi?!ess  Correspondent,  No.  90. 

2  Russian  Gazette,  No.  149. 

3  Astrakhan  Messenger,  No.  291. 

4  Ibid.  No.  299. 

5  Northern  Messenger,  November,  1890,  p.  24. 

6  Ibid, 


248  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

behind  at  every  landing-place,  containing  the  remains  of  peasants  who 
have  migrated  to  the  Klysian  fields,  and  scores  of  children  infected  with 
small-pox,  with  diphtheria,  congestion  of  the  lungs,  are  continually 
arriving  at  Tomsk,  and  augmenting  the  number  of  graves."  ^ 

In  damp  sheds,  thrown  up  on  the  banks  of  the  river 
Toor,  thousands  of  persons  are  huddled  together  in  Tiumen 
on  dirty  straw,  without  even  plank  beds  to  He  on.  I'he 
children  are  put  to  sleep  under  wagons  whenever  any  can 
be  had.  The  number  of  such  wanderers  passing  through 
Tiumen  amounted  this  year  to  over  30,000.  U'he  rainy 
weather  reduced  their  scant  provisions  of  fire-dried  bread 
to  a  pulp,  and  brought  them  to  death's  door.  In  May, 
while  there  were  14,000  persons  waiting  for  the  navigation 
to  open,  the  thermometer  registered  23  degrees  (Fahren- 
heit), and  more  than  13,000  of  them  had  to  lie  down  and 
camp  out  in  the  open  air  in  spite  of  this  cold.  A  large 
number  of  corpses  (especially  of  children)  were  carted 
away  every  day.-  In  Tomsk  the  wanderers  are  driven  out 
to  camp  in  a  swamp,  where  there  are  a  few  sheds  capable 
of  sheltering  four  hundred  persons.  The  accommodation 
they  enjoy  while  here  may  be  inferred  from  the  circum- 
stance that  they  usually  rowed  up  to  the  doors  of  their  sheds 
in  boats.^ 

In  all  parts  of  Russia  one  hears  of  and  sees  these  woe- 
begone wretches —  pillars  of  Imperial  finance  crumbling  in 
dust  away.  "A  new  stream  of  migrants  has  flowed  in 
here,"  exclaims  the  Tiflis  Gazette,  "from  the  government 
of  Koorsk.  The  poor  wretches  sold  their  horses  and 
wagons  before  they  reached  here,  hoping  to  get  some  work 
as  mowers,  but  they  have  been  rudely  disappointed."* 
"On  the  29th  May,  a  party  of  migrating  peasants'  fami- 
lies passed  through  Kieff  on  their  way  to  licssarabia.  .  .  . 
They  are  suffering  extr^ne  misery.  Many  of  them  have 
remained  in  Kieff  subsisting  on  alms."^  An  army  of  over 
20,000  mowers  wandered  from  Taganrog  to  Yeissk  in  search 
of  something  to  do,  but  found  nothing;  more  than  half  of 
them  returned  the  way  they  came,  and  endeavored  by 
means  of  begging  for  means  to  move  on  to  other  places. 
Neither  farmers  nor  others  can  afford  to  give  them  work  in 

1  Northern  Messenger,  loc.  cit.,  p.  25. 

2  Ibid.  p.  27. 

3  Ibid. 

4  Tijlis  Gazette,  No.  148. 

6  Odessa  News,  May,  1890,  No.  1619. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  249 

return  for  a  piece  of  black  breads  ^  What  eventually  befell 
this  formidable  army  of  starvelings?  Its  fate  has  not  been 
disclosed  by  the  press;  but  possibly  the  village  grave- 
diggers  of  Russia  could  account  for  a  very  large  contingent. 
It  was  possibly  hunger  that  ended  the  sufferings  and  the 
wanderings  of  many  members  of  the  hungry  band  of  two 
thousand  mowers  from  Kieff,  Koorsk,  and  Poltava,  who 
were  equally  unsuccessful  in  obtaining  temporary  employ- 
ment. A  few  died  before  the  eyes  of  the  public.  "In 
the  broad  daylight,  in  sight  of  all  men,  four  of  them  died  of 
sheer  hunger.  This  was  confirmed  by  the  post-mortem 
examination."^ 

Men  in  any  other  country  subjected  to  such  sufferings  as 
these  would  assuredly  not  subordinate  their  anger  and  their 
instinctive  love  of  life  to  any  feeling  of  respect  that  might 
still  linger  in  their  minds  for  the  property  of  others;  and 
the  forbearance  of  the  Russian  peasant  in  circumstances 
that  seem  calculated  to  stifle  the  promptings  of  humanity 
and  throw  him  back  upon  first  principles,  is  worthy  of  pro- 
found pity  rather  than  high  praise,  for  it  is  the  forbearance 
of  soulless  apathy  rather  than  the  discipline  of  self-control. 
But  at  times  even  the  Russian  peasant  gives  signs  of  life 
and  feeling;  proves  that  his  composition  is  not  wholly 
devoid  of  what  is  euphemistically  termed  human  nature. 
Thus,  in  Martynovka  last  summer,  there  were  ten  thousand 
mowers  perishing  of  hunger,  but  willing  and  eager  to  work, 
even  for  a  mouthful  of  dry  bread.  But  even  on  these 
terms  they  could  get  nothing  to  do.  They  grew  excited, 
murmurs  rustled  through  the  blackening  mass  of  humanity, 
and  noticing  some  peasants  who  were  carting  corn,  they 
seized  upon  it  in  a  twinkling,  and  then  betook  themselves 
to  the  stores  of  a  neighboring  corn-merchant,  where  they 
also  took  a  moderate  portion  of  corn  for  every  man.^ 

In  the  Balashevsky  district  the  hungry  multitude  col- 
lected outside  the  house  of  the  representative  of  the  Gov- 
ernment and  loudly  clamored  for  bread.  "  For  three  days 
we  have  not  broken  our  fast,  for  heaven's  sake  give  us 
bread  or  corn,  or  else  we'll  take  it.  Our  children  are 
moaning  at  home  half  dead  of  hunger;  let's  have  a  little 
corn !  "    The  authorities  refused;  mumbled  something  about 


1  Northern  Messenger,  July,  1890.     Cf.  also  The  Saratoff  Messenger,  No. 


121. 


2  The  Crimea,  No.  72,  1890.        ^  The  Don,  speech,  No.  66. 


250  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

sending  in  written  petitions  and  obtaining  the  necessary 
authorization.  "We  care  nothing  for  petitions,  it's  corn 
we  want;  "  and  they  swayed  to  and  fro  for  a  time,  but  at 
last  swept  on  towards  the  granary.  The  guard  there  at  first 
refused  to  admit  them;  on  reflection,  however,  he  cun- 
ningly put  the  key  of  the  granary  on  the  railing,  and  dared 
any  man  of  them  to  remove  it.  They  knew  that  that  meant 
Siberia;  but  necessity  sharpened  their  wits.  A  long  pole 
was  got,  and  every  man  touching  it  with  his  hand,  they  all 
removed  the  key.  This  was  then  attached  to  a  long  cord 
which  every  man  held,  mo\iiigthus  the  key  to  the  keyhole. 
At  last  the  door  was  opened  not  by  one  or  two  persons,  but 
by  the  joint  efforts  of  them  all,  and  the  corn  was  taken 
out.^  This  is  narrated  by  I'rince  Meshtshersky  as  a  case  of 
desperate  insubordination  that  should  be  ruthlessly  stamped 
out  at  once. 

These  intense  sufferings  of  the  Russian  peasantry  surely 
constitute  one  of  the  strongest  arguments  that  a  patriot  has 
ever  put  forward  in  favor  of  the  brutal  treatment  meted 
out  to  convicted  criminals  and  honest  Jews,  and  to  which 
very  shortly  even  the  harmless  Finns  are  to  be  subjected. 
If  patriotism  is  powerless  to  alleviate  the  misery  of  Russian 
Christians,  it  should  at  least  i)revent  its  being  aggravated  by 
the  obtrusive  prosperity  of  odious  Jews  and  Protestant  Finns. 
And  if  free  men  and  Christians,  who  are  dying  like  poi- 
soned flies  in  the  desperate  attempt  to  pay  taxes  that 
exceed  their  income,  are  being  flogged  and  imprisoned  in 
order  to  give  a  fillip  to  zeal,  which  even  the  instinct  of 
self-preservation  is  unable  to  conjure,  why  should  any 
tenderness  be  shown  for  prisoners  who  are  confessedly 
guilty  of  crime? 

For  poverty,  illness,  hunger,  misfortune  are  no  excuses 
in  the  eyes  of  the  Finance  Ministry;  as  borrowing  in  Rus- 
sia is  a  disguised  selling,  so  is  tax-gathering  a  masked 
expropriation  of  the  capital  of  the  peasants  —  nay,  a 
masked  selling  of  their  bodies  into  captivity.  Since  the 
mobilization  of  finances  began,  extraordinary  measures 
have  been  taken  to  recover  arrears  of  taxes,  and  to  prevent 
them  from  accumulating  in  future.  Thus,  for  instance, 
since  1888  the  ministry  has  given  orders  that  all  factories, 
works,  shops,  etc.,  are  to  deduct  from  the  wages  of  peas- 
ant workmen  the  amount  of  taxes  due  at  the  rate  of  one- 

1  Graschdanin,  21st  June,  1889. 


RUSSIAN   FINANCE.  2$l 

third  of  the  weekly  wages  of  unmarried  persons,  and  one- 
fourth  if  the  person  have  a  family.^  Thus  the  white  slave 
who  spends  his  day  of  fifteen  hours  in  hard  work  and 
receives  for  that  his  few  pence  a  week,  must  deliver  up 
threepence  of  it  every  week  as  his  contribution  to  the 
mobilization  of  his  country's  finances.  The  peasant's 
corn  is  also  taken  from  him  and  sealed  up  till  he  pay  the 
last  farthing,  which  he  can  only  do  by  raising  money  at 
such  rates  of  interest  as  were  described  above.  Meanwhile 
he  may  literally  starve.^  Peasants  in  cities  receive  no 
passports,  and  must  return  home  by  efape,  along  with  con- 
victs and  felons,  until  they  pay  every  copeck,  and  their 
native  village,  where  they  are  condemned  to  stay,  becomes 
for  them  a  sort  of  Ugolino's  hunger  tower.^  This  deter- 
mination to  have  the  money  at  all  costs  is  so  awkwardly 
evident  that  even  once,  when  the  authorized  representative 
of  the  Government  received  the  taxes  and  spent  them  on 
his  own  pleasures,  the  peasants  were  told  that  the  Govern- 
ment could  not  afford  to  be  at  the  loss  of  the  money,  so 
they  must  pay  it  over  again,  and  when  some  of  them 
proved  that  they  were  absolutely  penniless,  the  police  set 
about  distraining  their  property.^ 

Can  the  poor  peasants  be  blamed  if,  under  such  condi- 
tions, they  rise  up  and  flee  to  Siberia,  the  Caucasus,  South 
America  —  any  whither  outside  their  own  native  place,  be- 
come a  vast  charnel-house?  "Where  are  you  bound  for?  " 
asked  a  newspaper  correspondent  of  a  batch  of  intending 
emigrants  to  South  America.  "For  Gafrika,"  one  replied. 
"That's  a  lie, "^  said  another;  "we're  going  to  Branzolia."^ 
"We're  doing  no  such  thing,"  broke  in  a  third;  "it's 
Aggripeena'^  as  we're  off  to."**  Numbers  of  these  wretches 
were  shot  down  for  running  off  to  South  America,  because, 
it  was  contended,  they  were  being  deceived  by  lying 
agents  who  discoursed  to  them  of  a  land  overflowing  with 


1  Cf.,  for  instance,  Day  {Deti),  6th  April,  1888. 

2  Niedielya,  lylh  January,  1890. 

^  Cf.  e.g.,  Novoye  Vremya,  loth  May,  1890. 

*  Novoye  Vremya,  3rd  December,  1888.  It  should,  however,  be  stated  in 
fairness  that,  to  the  best  of  my  belief,  the  peasants  appealed  from  this 
decision  and  obtained  judgment  in  their  favor  from  the  competent  judicial 
authorities. 

5  The  Russian  way  of  suggesting  that  the  speaker  is  in  error. 

6  Probably  Brazil. 
^  Argentina. 

8  Cf.  Novoye  Vremya,  29th  October,  1890. 


252  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

milk  and  honey.  But  the  truth  is,  that  the  misery  they 
were  enduring  in  Russia  would  im])el  any  man  to  rush  off 
to  any  country,  were  it  even  to  that  distant  land  from 
whose  bourne  no  traveller  returns.  Their  land  was  sold 
long  ago  to  pay  taxes,  and  nothing  was  left  for  them  but 
to  work  to  keep  their  families  and  themselves  in  a  world 
in  which  they  seemed  suj^erfluous.  Many  of  them  could 
get  nothing  to  do,  and  those  who  found  employment  — 
the  spoiled" children  of  fortune  —  worked  like  galley-slaves 
for  fifteen  hours  a  day,  receiving  tenpence  halfpenny  a  iveek, 
or  three  far  tilings  per  day  of  fifteen  hours}  ^^■hat  diabolical 
eloquence  must  have  been  needed  on  the  part  of  the  for- 
eign agents  to  persuade  these  spoiled  children  of  fortune 
to  tear  themselves  away  from  their  dearly  beloved  country ! 
And  how  those  who  esca]:)ed  and  are  now  in  South  America 
must  often  sit  down  by  the  rivers  of  Brazil  or  of  Argentina 
and  weep  when  they  remember  Russia ! 

As  for  those  who  remain  in  Russia,  until  they  pay  their 
last  debt  to  nature,  they  never  manage  to  pay  it  to  insati- 
able man;  they  are  forced,  however  pressing  their  own 
needs,  to  contribute  to  satisfy  those  of  the  Treasury.  It 
is  not  merely  that  their  land  and  huts  are  sold  by  auction, 
but  their  labor  is  sold  for  the  benefit  of  the  Covernment, 
and  they  are  systematically  flogged  lest  they  should  prefer 
the  prior  claims  of  their  children  and  their  wives  to  those 
of  an  ingenious  finance  minister  whose  reputation  is  at 
stake.  Yes,  systematically  flogged  and  treated  as  English 
Jews  used  to  be  by  greedy  Plantagenet  kings.  Flogging 
the  peasants  to  compel  them  to  pay  taxes  is  grown  very 
common  of  late  years,  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  a  special 
word  has  been  coined  for  it  —  "the  threshing  out  of 
arrears."      "By  what  advantages,"  asks  the  Latv  Messen- 

"is  this  use  of  the  lash  compensated?  By  none.  Flogging  does  not 
thresh  out  the  taxes  nor  the  arrears,  Init  brutalizes  the  man  suljjectcd 
to  it.  .Suppose  he  have  money  which  he  is  hiding,  he  \\\\\  of  course 
pay  up  before  he  submits  to  this  infamous  and  extremely  jminful  pun- 
ishment; and  if  he  does  not  pay  under  these  circumstances,  it  is  obvious 
that  he  has  not  the  wherewithal.  We  could  not  admit  the  contrary, 
unless  the  ordeal  of  flogging  freed  him  from  all  further  ol)ligatiun. 
This,  however,  it  does  not.  To  whij)  a  man,  therefore,  who  has  been 
unsuccessful  in  obtaining  the  necessary  sum,  notwithstanding  tlie  pres- 
ent extreme  difficulty  of  earning  anything,  and  tlie  terribly  low  rate  of 


1  Glos,  25th  November,  1890:  Novoye  Vremya,  30th  November,  1890. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE.  253 

wages,  is  a  deed  of  the  most  crying  barharity.i  You  sell  his  property 
by  auction,  you  break  up  his  farm  and  home,  and  compel  him  by  means 
of  physical  suffering  and  infamy  to  expiate  his  misfortune,  but  the 
upshot  of  all  your  measures  is  that  the  '  man '  perishes  and  you  see 
in  his  stead  a  desperate  exasperated  individual  who  works  harm  to  him- 
self and  is  fraught  with  danger  to  others."  ^  , 

"The  moral  effect  of  these  hard  conditions  upon  the 
peasants  of  the  young  generation  is,"  we  are  assured,  "truly 
horrible.  The  notions  of  law  and  justice  are  torn  out  of 
their  hearts  in  the  most  cruel  and  painful  way,  and,  side 
by  side  with  utter  stupefaction  and  despondency,  one 
observes  the  symptoms  of  unconscious  hate,  which  assumes 
at  times  most  monstrous  forms. "^  "Types  have  started 
into  being,"  remarks  the  representative  of  the  Imperial 
Economical  Society  in  his  official  report,  "which  it  is 
absolutely  impossible  to  match :  eternally  drunk,  with  dis- 
figured features,  with  wandering  glance,  covered  with  rags, 
they  look  like  half-tamed  beasts.  There  lurks  an  unwonted 
cruelty  and  savagery  in  their  entire  aspect.  They  are 
feared  by  everyone,  by  the  authorities  of  the  village  and 
district  most  of  all."'*  Sons  persecute  their  fathers, 
drunken  fathers  dissipate  the  property  and  abandon  their 
families  to  fate.  "This  is  not  a  proletariat,"  exclaims  the 
above-mentioned  official;  "it  is  a  return  to  savagery.  No 
trace  of  anything  human  has  remained y'^  With  materials 
so  unpromising  as  these  who  but  a  genuine  thaumaturge 
would  attempt  to  build  up  even  for  a  brief  five  years  a 
nation's  credit?  "It  is  a  matter  of  surprise,"  exclaims  the 
most  respectable  review  in  all  Russia,  "  how  people  man- 
age even  to  exist  who  are  thus  ground  down  on  all  sides 
and  ruined,  who  live  in  a  state  of  perpetual  state  of  hun- 
ger, are  helpless  against  any  schemer  instructed  in  the  arts 
of  reading  and  writing  who  comes  along,  who  have  spent  all 
their  spiritual  force  in  the  vain  struggle  against  a  combi- 
nation of  injustice,  arbitrariness,  and  violence,  and  who 
can  nowhere  hope  to  find  defence  and  shelter."''  And  yet 
a  minister  has  been  found  capable  of  solving  the  apparently 
insoluble  problem  of  extracting  even  out  of  these  woebe- 

'^  "  Dielom  samova  vopiooshtshova  varvarstva."  —  Lazu  Messenger,  No- 
vember, 1890,  p.  377. 

2  Cf.  Law  Messenger,  November,  1890,  pp.  377,  378. 

3  Cf.  The  Messenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  781. 
••  Ibid.  pp.  781,  782. 

5  Ibid. 

6  Messenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  778. 


254  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

gone  subjects  the  money  which  they  do  not  themselves 
possess:  he  compels  them  to  fulfil  his  commands  more 
faithfully  than  even  the  spell-bound  demons  executed  the 
strange  behests  of  Michael  Scott. 

This  is  not  the  exaggerated  eulogium  of  an  enthusiastic 
admirer;  it  would  be  imi)ossible  to  be  more  moderate  in 
praising  M.  Vyshnegradsky  without  doing  injustice  to  the 
facts,  of  which  I  shall  quote  but  one  example.  "  In  many 
parts  of  the  government  of  Ryazan,"  says  the  same  official 
Russian  organ,  "  the  peasants,  for  want  of  rye,  support  life 
on  acorn  bread.  The  official  of  the  district  board,  sent 
down  to  investigate  the  condition  of  the  peasants  on  the 
spot,  states  that  in  some  families  a  mixture  of  the  weed 
called  goosefoot  {Chenopodiutn),  acorns,  and  rye  is  eaten; 
in  others  bread  is  made  of  potatoes,  acorns,  and  rye,  and 
in  others,  again,  of  acorns  alone.  ^Ve  have  often  heard," 
remarks  this  organ  with  graceful  and  well-timed  wit,  "of 
acorn  coffee,  but  this  is  the  first  time  that  we  have  heard  of 
acorn  bread."  '  Another  official  report,  frequently  quoted 
in  the  course  of  this  paper,  asserts,  in  reference  to  the  con- 
dition of  the  peasants  of  the  Porkhovski  district  —  "poverty 
prevails  among  them  everywhere.     In  some  villages  they 

subsist  on bread,  of  which  a  person  unaccustomed  to 

it  could  not  swallow  a  single  morsel."  This  may  seem  at 
first  sight  an  exaggerated  description;  but  it  is  really  a 
somewhat  mild  characteristic  of  bread  which,  as  the  offi- 
cial goes  on  to  remark,  "«  not  so  much  bread  as  dry  cow- 
dun 


n  2 


Now  it  requires  a  degree  of  optimism  bordering  closely 
upon  hallucination  to  treat  men  who  have  to  still,  without 
satisfying,  the  cravings  of  hunger  by  swallowing  dry  cow- 
dung,  as  solvent  tax-payers;  for  it  is  only  natural  to  believe 
that  if  these  martyrs  of  financial  tactics  did  occasionally 
earn  or  steal  a  few  pence,  they  would  si)end  it  on  bread  that 
was  genuine  rye  bread,  or  at  least  acorn  bread,  and  not 
mere  dry  cowdung,  rather  than  hand  it  over  to  the  Imperial 
Treasury.  And  yet  such  is  not  the  fact;  and  it  remains 
one  of  the  most  brilliant  triumphs  of  the  present  minister 
of  finances,  who  has  so  often  succeeded  in  gathering  grapes 
from  thorns,  that  he  has  here  also  shown  his  art  by  extract- 

1  Novoye  Vreffiya,  I2th  December,  i8qo. 

2  G.  P.  Sazonoff,  I'easaiit  I'loprietorship  in  the  Porkhovski  District,  St. 
Petersburg,  1890.    Cf.  also  Messenger  of  Europe,  October,  1890,  p.  tj']. 


RUSSIAN    FINANCE,  255 

ing  gold  from  dried  cowdung.  The  Russian  peasantry,  in 
short,  are  on  the  rack  of  a  giant  despotism,  and,  as  the 
years  pass,  and  the  tension  increases,  they  are  forced  to 
yield  not  only  all  that  makes  life  worth  living,  their  flocks 
and  herds,  their  crops  and  labor,  their  homes  and  home- 
life,  but  also  at  last  their  very  life-blood  at  the  bidding  of 
the  Tsar.  "These  same  peasants,"  we  are  informed,  "are 
punctual  tax-payers,  regularly  paying  the  interest  on  their 
debts  and  lodging  it  in  the  city  bank.  These  men  can 
scarcely  be  called  human  beings;  they  are  more  like 
machines  for  the  payment  of  taxes,  half-unconscious  creat- 
ures who  fancy  themselves  created  solely  for  the  purpose 
of  working  on  in  hopeless  toil."  ^  This  is  doubtless  a  very 
sad  consummation,  and  one  that  is  regretted  by  no  one 
more  profoundly  than  by  the  kind-hearted  minister  himself, 
who  would  much  sooner  alleviate  distress  than  produce  it. 
But  why  dwell  on  the  inevitable  ?  If,  says  the  Russian  prov- 
erb, you  have  called  yourself  a  mushroom,  you  must  jump 
into  the  basket.  The  main  point  —  and  one  which  should 
not  be  forgotten  by  carping  critics  eager  to  condemn  a 
minister,  whose  moral  courage  equals  his  ingenuity  —  is, 
that  he  has  successfully  solved  a  most  difficult  problem 
which  a  Goschen  or  even  a  Gladstone  would  shrink  even 
from  tackling.     A  stick  has  been  given  to  him  — 

"  once  fire  from  end  to  end, 
Now  ashes  save  the  tip  that  holds  a  spark  "  — 

and  he  has  cheerfully  undertaken  the  task  —  which  he  bids 
fair  to  accomplish  —  to  blow  that  solitary  spark  with  such 
superhuman  force  that  it  will  run  back  and  spread  itself 
where  the  fire  lately  burned,  and  impart  a  bright  warm  look 
to  what,  an  instant  later,  will  be  recognized  by  the  dullest 
as  cold  black  ashes. 

1  Messenger  of  Europe. 


256  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE    RUSSIAN   CENSURE. 

Thk  idea  which  an  Englishman  usually  attaches  to  the 
words,  Russian  Censure,  is  that  of  a  strict  and  irksome  con- 
trol exercised  over  the  ]:)criodical  press  with  a  view  to  hin- 
der the  propagation  of  ideas  or  the  publication  of  facts 
tending  to  discredit  autocracy  in  the  eyes  of  Russians; 
that  is  to  say,  an  institution  unpoj^idar  but  indispensable  as 
long  as  the  doctrine  of  divine  right  is  sedulously  taught  and 
bolstered  up  with  dishonest  interpretations  of  bible  prophe- 
cies, said  to  contain  predictions  about  the  escape  of  the 
present  I'hn])eror  from  a  violent  death  at  15orki  in  the 
Steppes  of  Southern  Russia.^  Whether  the  reality  is 
entirely  covered  by  this  moderate  view,  will  appear  from 
the  following  sketch,  based  ui)on  carefully  verified  facts 
which  can  be  supported  by  most  trustworthy  evidence. 

The  definition  of  the  scope  of  the  Censure  put  forward 
with  all  needful  clearness  in  the  fourteenth  volume  of  that 
hell  of  good  intentions  called,  "The  Complete  Collection 
of  Russian  Laws,"  is  as  comprehensive  as  the  most  tyran- 
nical autocrat  could  well  desire.  "Its  function  is  to  scru- 
tinize all  productions  of  literature,  science,  and  art  destined 
to  be  circulated  in  the  Emjiire,  with  the  exception  of  such 
as  are  expressly  exempted  from  preventi\e  censure,"  which, 
I  may  explain  by  the  way,  are  also  scrutinized  and  judged 
with  the  same  unbending  rigor.  This  ])aradox  is  (juite  on 
a  par  with  the  statement  of  the  Connaught  clodhopper,  sent 
to  see  whether  all  the  pigs  were  come  home,  to  the  effect  that 
he  was  not  quite  sure  as  to  their  number;  he  had  counted 
them  all  except  one  mottled  pig  with  a  curly  tail,  that  kept 

1  Serious  organs  of  the  Russian  press  maintained  that  one  of  the  minor 
prophets  foretold  the  raihuay  accident  at  Borki,  and  the  miraculous  inter- 
vention of  Providence  in  favor  of  the  Imperial  family.  The  most  curious 
part  of  this  tlieory  is  the  statement  that  the  Em]3eror's  name  was  mentioned 
l)y  the  inspired  writer  in  full,  as  was  also  that  of  the  Empress.  The  matter 
was  seriously  discussed  by  Russian  theologians  two  years  ago.  Jeremiah 
may  yet  be  found  to  have  foreseen,  foretold,  and  lamented  the  fiasco  of  the 
Abyssinian  Expedition  under  Aschinoff,  and  the  bombardment  at  Sagallo. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  257 

running  about  in  such  a  bewildering  way  that  the  wit  of 
man  could  not  count  him.  Even  if  jealously  confined 
within  these  broad  limits,  the  Censure  would  still  deserve 
to  be  regarded  as  an  all-important  factor  in  the  history  of 
Russian  civilization,  a  sort  of  serpent-like  Nithhoggr,  gnaw- 
ing away  at  the  three-fold  root  of  modern  culture  —  litera- 
ture, art,  and  science.  In  practice,  however,  it  knows  no 
limits;  but,  striking  out  successively  in  every  direction, 
contrives  to  hedge  in  thought  in  all  its  forms,  crushing  out 
every  normal  manifestation  of  healthy,  moral,  and  intellec- 
tual life,  and  suppressing  with  the  same  ruthlessness  a  play, 
a  picture,  and  a  private  letter.  It  would  be  impossible  to 
point  to  any  branch  of  science,  art,  or  literature  on  which 
the  Censure  has  not  left  deep  and  abiding  traces  of  its 
nefarious  influence,  stunting  it  in  its  growth,  and  warping 
it  from  its  appointed  goal,  sometimes  into  miry  paths  and 
marshy  byways,  whither  even  the  moralist  follows  it  only 
from  afar. 

A  long,  yellow,  ugly  building  in  Theatre  Street,  St. 
Petersburg,  which,  appropriately  enough,  also  accommo- 
dates the  Prisons  Board,  is  the  material  receptacle  of  what- 
ever brain-power  the  Russian  Censure  may  be  supposed  to 
possess.  It  is  divided  into  a  home  and  foreign  department, 
the  former  of  which  has  its  functions  as  a  sort  of  intellectual 
excise  office,  and  the  latter  as  a  literary  custom-house  with 
a  prohibitive  tariff.  It  is  in  one  of  the  stuffy  rooms  of  this 
dingy  building  that  the  official  (who  probably  has  never 
been  to  a  university  or  even  grammar  school)  told  off  to 
censure  the  Tsar's  journalistic  literature  runs  his  eye  every 
morning  through  the  damp  newspapers,  marking  with  a 
red  pencil  the  passages  which  he  thinks  it  prudent  and 
desirable  that  the  Emperor  should  read,  cutting  them  out 
with  a  scissors  later  on,  and  pasting  them  on  a  few  sheets 
of  thick  paper.  It  is  in  another  room  of  the  same  edifice 
that  these  courtly  extracts  are  conned  by  a  more  expe- 
perienced  member  of  the  Council  —  generally  the  Direc- 
tor-in-chief; after  receiving  whose  imprimatur  they  are 
carefully  copied  out  in  a  bold,  legible  hand,  censured  by 
three  or  four  other  dignitaries,  by  each  from  his  own  par- 
ticular point  of  view,  perused  by  the  aide-de-camp  in  wait- 
ing, and  served  up  by  him  in  the  digestible  form  of  gossip, 
spiced  with  the  chronique  scandaleuse  of  the  day  before. 

But  this  spacious  building  possesses  no  chamber  of  hor- 
rors, no  pandemonium  of  souls  in  pain,  such  as  one  may 


2^8  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

see  any  day  in  the  passport  office.  The  reason  ks  that  little 
of  the  real  labor  of  sifting  the  wheat  and  isolating  it  from 
the  tares  is  done  in  this  literary  clearing-house,  which  gener- 
ally confines  its  activity  to  issuing  orders,  taking  official 
cognizance  oi  their  execution,  and  summarily  deciding  such 
cases  of  doubt  as  occasionally  crop  up  even  here,  where  a 
whim  is  held  to  be  a  fair  substitute  for  a  reason.  Books, 
manuscripts,  engravings,  photographs,  atlases,  music'  — 
for  the  device  of  the  censure  rs  Humaiii  nihil  a  me  alienuvi 
piito  —  are  being  daily  received  in  these  quarantine  bar- 
racks for  disinfection  or  destruction,  and  from  this  office 
they  are  usually  sent  to  the  private  lodgings  of  the  Censors, 
who  examine  them  when  they  have  time,  passing  a  judg- 
ment from  which  there  is  seldom  any  appeal.  Once  a  week 
the  Censors  come  together  in  solemn  conclave,  to  compare 
notes  and  distribute  the  work  on  hand. 

This  wide  range  of  subjects  renders  it  necessary  that  the 
Censors  should  in  certain  cases  modestly  content  themselves 
with  the  functions  of  a  grand  jury,  and,  having  found  a  true 
bill  against  the  accused,  refers  to  a  still  less  able  but  also 
less  responsible  body  the  inquiry  into  details.  But  no 
Censor  would  dispense  himself  from  reading  profes- 
sionally a  cookery  book  on  the  flimsy  pretext  that  the 
bearing  of  the  culinary  art  upon  Russian  autocracy  is 
so  shadowy  and  remote  that  an  error  of  judgment  in 
estimating  it  would  prove  comparatively  harmless.  On 
the  contrary,  he  would  first  analyze  the  work  from  a 
purely  political  point  of  view,  and  then  pass  it  on  to 
the  medical  censure,  where  the  hygienic  truths  it  con- 
tained would  be  sifted  and  winnowed  from  the  heresies, 
and,  the  suggested  changes  having  been  made  by  the  author, 
sanctioned  for  publication.  Tf  Lenten  fare  were  descanted 
upon  to  any  considerable  extent,  the  work  would  most  prob- 
ably be  also  submitted  to  the  ecclesiastical  censure,  whose 
deliberations  are  invariably  characterized  by  incredible 
slowness.  A  book  on  logarithms  or  conic  sections,  or  a 
treatise  on  medicine  written  in  Singhalese  or  Celtic,  or  any 
other  tongue,  of  which  no  subject  of  the  Tsar  has  an  inkling, 
would,  an  uninitiated  person  might  suppose,  be  wholly  dis- 
pensed from  the  time-consuming  formalities  of  the  Censure 
Office.  This,  however,  is  not  the  case.  The  Censure  in 
Russia  is  as  universal  as  death :  no  book  can  escape  it;  and 

1  Cf.  §  187,  Observ.  I.  of  the  Censure  Laws. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  •  259 

more  than  one  purely  mathematical  work  has  ben  suffocated 
before  it  saw  the  light,  owing  to  the  disordered  fancy  of  a 
harassed  ofhcial.  Should  a  special  treatise  of  this  kind 
contain  a  sentence  in  the  preface  or  a  foot-note  alluding  to 
the  enlightenment  of  the  Emperor  or  his  father  or  grand- 
father, it  would,  after  having  been  examined  in  the  ordinary 
way,  be  handed  over  to  the  Minister  of  the  Court,  who 
would  take  counsel  as  to  whether  the  allusion  should  stand 
or  the  work  be  allowed  to  appear.  "  How  dare  you  allow 
a  ribald  scribbler  to  lampoon  my  imperial  ancestors?  "  said 
the  Tsar  to  the  Head  of  the  Censure,  a  few  months  ago, 
alluding  to  an  erudite  history  of  Catherine  the  Great.  A 
book  that  touches  even  incidentally  upon  marriage  or 
burial,  a  saint  or  a  ceremony,  after  issuing  from  the  ordeal 
of  the  general  censure,  must  run  the  gauntlet  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical inquisition;  a  tragedy  or  comedy  has  to  be  scruti- 
nized by  the  general  censure,  the  dramatic  censure,  and 
then,  according  to  the  range  of  subjects  incidentally 
touched  upon,  by  the  ecclesiastical,  military,  or  other 
appropriate  departments;  a  work  on  finance  —  say,  Pro- 
fessor Jevons'  book  on  money —  would  have  to  pass  through 
the  censure  of  the  Ministry  of  Finances;  and  a  biography 
upon  Russian  contemporary  celebrities  would  have  to  be 
first  sanctioned  by  all  or  nearly  all  of  these  various  censures, 
and  then  by  every  dignitary  and  every  influential  writer 
mentioned  in  the  work.' 

Some  works  that  pass  out  of  three  or  four  such  ordeals 
unscathed  are  condemned  in  the  last,  and  either  wholly 
annihilated  or  placed  in  one  of  the  pigeon-holes  of  the 
archives  in  Theatre  Street  —  a  store-room  of  unrealized 
ideas,  wishes,  plans,  and  projects  like  those  with  which 
Ariosto  filled  the  limbo  of  the  moon.  The  number  of  these 
records  of  things  that  might  have  been  —  many  of  which 
disappear  every  year  for  want  of  proper  surveillance  —  is 
immense;  for  the  Censure  disdains  nothing,  from  formid- 
able folios  to  tiny  leaflets;  and  only  eighteen  months  have 
elapsed  since  his  Majesty's  Minister  publicly  reprimanded 
the  responsible  ofhcials  for  a  culpable  lack  of  zeal  in  cen- 
suring the  little  gilt  paper  rings  that  encircle  cheap  cigars 
and  cigarettes,  on  which  one  word  is  printed  —  the  name  of 

1  Our  Acquaintances  is  the  title  of  a  humorous  work  on  these  lines. 
The  characteristics  of  nearly  every  one  of  the  persons  mentioned  therein 
had  to  be  re-written  in  very  many  cases,  suppressed  in  several,  modifier),  in 
most,  and  sanctioned  in  all, 


260  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

the  cigar  which  implies  its  strength  and  quality.  'I'he 
names,  it  appears,  were  in  many  cases  printed  with  Latin 
instead  of  Slavonic  letters,  and  were,  like  the  cigars  them- 
selves, of  Polish,  not  of  Russian  origin,  and  the  pa]>er  ring- 
lets were,  in  the  interests  of  good  government  and  public 
morality,  forthwith  forbidden.'  "\\'e  have  quite  a  numer- 
ous series  of  censures,"  wrote  one  of  the  few  enlightened 
members  of  that  body;  *'a  General  Censure  under  the 
Ministry  of  Public  Instruction  (now  the  JNIinistry  of  the 
Interior);  a  Supreme  Board  of  Censure;  an  Ecclesiastical 
Censure;  a  Military  Censure;  a  Censure  in  the  Service  of 
the  Foreign  Office;  a  Dramatic  Censure  in  the  Ministry  of 
the  Court;  a  Press  Censure;  a  Censure  of  the  Secret  Police; 
anew  Pedagogical  Censure;  a  Censure  of  Law  Books;  a 
Censure  of  Foreign  Works.  If  we  reckon  uj)  all  the  officials 
occupied  in  censuring,  we  find  that  they  are  more  numer- 
ous than  the  books  that  are  published  each  year."^ 

The  laws  laid  down  for  the  guidance  of  the  Censors  are 
rigidly  absolute  in  the  sense  that  while  the  official,  prompted 
by  fear  of  dismissal,  desire  of  ])romotion,  or  private  ani- 
mosity, may  err  with  impunity  on  the  side  of  severity,  an 
attempt  to  stretch  a  point  in  the  direction  of  indulgence 
would  inevitably  prove  suicidal;  a  hundred  sleuthhounds 
would  scent  out  the  crime,  and  anonymous  denunciations 
and  signed  indictments  would  rain  upon  the  Minister  as 
plentifully  as  w^arnings  used  to  pour  into  the  mouth  of  the 
lion  of  St.  Mark's  in  troublous  times  of  sedition  and  dis- 
content, leaving  the  Minister  no  choice  but  to  punish  the 
(•ul])rit.  The  Censor,  told  to  bear  in  mind  that  excess  of 
zeal  may  possibly  be  rewarded  but  will  never  be  punished, 
whereas  indulgence  is  almost  certain  to  be  followed  by  dis- 
missal, frequently  succumbs  to  the  temptation  to  commit 
most  arbitrary  acts,  against  which  the  public,  which  is  quite 
accustomed  to  be  treated  with  cynical  contempt,  has  no 
remedy.  I  was  once  on  terms  of  intimate  acquaintance 
with  the  Censor  of  the  Foreign  Department,  enjoying  a 
favorable  opportunity  of  observing  the  manner  in  which 
he  —  an  unusually  indulgent  official  —  acquitted  himself  of 
his  official  duties.  He  explained  to  me  the  working  of  the 
Postal  Censure,  which  receives  daily  all  the  foreign  reviews, 
newspapers,  books,    music,  and   printed    matter  of    every 

1  Graschdanin,  ■zj'Cci  October,  1889. 

2  Cf.  Russian  Antiquity,  March,  1891,  p.  632. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  26 1 

description  which  pass  through  the  post  to  persons  living 
in  Russia.  The  examination  is  sometimes  tedious,  and  the 
result  frequently  unfavorable;  but  if  the  book  or  journal  be 
registered,  it  may  be  expected  in  the  long  run  to  be  either 
delivered  to  the  addressee  or  returned  whence  it  came; 
otherwise  the  chances  are  considerable  that,  whether  ap- 
proved or  condemned,  neither  the  sender  nor  the  addressee 
will  ever  set  eyes  upon  it  again.  My  own  experience  amply 
confirms  this  statement.  Hundreds  of  copies  of  English, 
French,  and  German  newspapers,  reviews,  and  books  sent 
to  me  and  to  my  personal  friends  have  been  intercepted  in 
this  way.^ 

This  friend  of  mine  in  the  Censure  Office  was  in  the  habit 
of  receiving  bundles  of  publications  twice  or  thrice  a  week 
addressed  to  people  living  in  Russia;  and  I  think  I  can 
honestly  say  that  he  never  once  made  a  present  of  any  of 
them  to  his  friends,  or  gave  them  a  place  in  his  own  library. 
The  language  they  were  written  in  was  not  Russian,  and  the 
number  of  persons  who  speak  or  read  it  in  the  Russian 
Empire  is  extremely  limited,  so  that  he  enjoyed  a  liberty 
to  do  almost  anything  he  liked  without  fear  of  control; 
moreover,  as  he  occupied  a  dozen  other  lucrative  posts  in 
the  city,  his  leisure  was  too  limited  to  allow  him  to  be 
pedantic  or  minutious.  He  seldom  mutilated,  and  still 
more  rarely  prohibited  a  book  or  review.     "Works  in  the 

language,"  he  used  to  say,  "are  as  likely  to  be  read 

by  Russians  as  the  inscriptions  of  Rameses  the  Great;  and 
it  does  not  signify  one  jot  what  they  contain."  He  was 
wont  to  read,  for  his  own  pleasure,  two  periodicals  addressed 
through  the  post  to  persons  who  lived  several  hundreds  of 
miles  from  St.  Petersburg,  often  keeping  them  back  a  month 
or  two  for  the  purpose.  I  once  paid  a  tribute  of  praise  to 
the  patience  of  the  two  distant  subscribers,  to  whom  it 
seemed  to  make  no  difference  that  they  received  in  Feb- 
ruary a  periodical  published  abroad  in  December  of  the 
year  preceding.  "Well,  worse  evils  might  befall  them 
than  waiting,"  he  once  exclaimed.  "I  have  never  yet  cut 
off   any  one's  supplies  of   periodical  literature,   though  I 


1  It  is  only  a  few  weeks  since  several  copies  of  the  English  translation  of 
Count  Tolstoi's  tale,  IVork  while  ye  have  the  Light,  forwarded  by  English 
booksellers  to  Englishmen  living  in  St.  Petersburg,  were  returned  by  the 
authorities.  One  of  the  gentlemen  whom  it  was  feared  the  perusal  of  this 
work  might  demoralize  is  the  lector  of  English  at  the  University  of  St. 
Petersburg  —  an  Oxford  scholar. 


262  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

might  do  so  at  any  time.     They  feel  that  this  power  is  a 
Damocles'  sword  ever  suspended  above  their  heads." 

Circmnstances  that  occurred  much  later  made  me  better 
acquainted  with  the  extent  of  the  discretionary  power  thus 
vested  in  men  whose  intellectual  development  is  generally 
much  inferior  to  that  of  those  to  whom  they  stand  in  the 
capacity  of  mentors.  A  weekly  periodical  which  I  was  in 
the  habit  of  receiving  possessed  an  irresistible  attraction  for 
the  Censor  appointed  to  read  it,  whose  education  had  been 
rather  neglected  in  his  youth.  Iking  compelled  somewhat 
•late  in  life  to  give  lessons  in  English  grammar  and  litera- 
ture, he  was  laudably  desirous  of  acquiring,  for  his  own 
satisfaction,  a  knowledge  of  the  language  which  he  was 
being  paid  to  teach.  He  selected  my  periodical  for  his 
experiment,  and  began  to  read  it  over  slowly  and  with  di fa- 
culty, working  most  zealously  with  the  dictionary  for  ten 
days  at  a  time,  while  1,  ignorant  of  his  efforts,  was  engaged 
in  an  angry  correspondence  with  my  bookseller  on  the  sub- 
ject of  the  delay.  Several  numbers  never  reached  me  at 
all. 

Once  when  more  than  usually  desirous  to  see  the  periodi- 
cal, in  order  to  read  an  interesting  paper  that  had  appeared 
therein,  I  applied  to  a  Russian  acquaintance  who,  I  was 
aware,  occasionally  received  a  copy.  On  inquiry,  however, 
he  proved  to  be  merely  a  borrower,  not  a  subscriber;  but 
he  kindly  promised  to  endeavor  to  procure  me  the  number 
1  was  seeking  for.  He  kept  his  word  and  sent  me  the  jour- 
nal, which  1  found,  to  my  extreme  surprise,  to  be  my  own 
copy,  paid  for  by  me,  but  read  and  owned  by  the  Censor, 
who  had  lent  it  to  the  friend  from  whom  my  Russian 
acquaintance  had  borrowed  it.  It  was  only  lent  to  me  for 
that  one  day,  and  I  never  set  my  eyes  upon  it  afterwards. 
An  official  whom  I  consulted  as  to  the  advisability  of  lodg- 
ing a  complaint  against  the  Censor  strongly  dissuaded  me 
on  the  ground  that  I  should  do  more  harm  to  myself  thereby 
than  to  this  indomitable  student  of  the  English  tongue. 

The  circumstance  that  many  of  the  Censure  laws  run 
counter  to  common  sense  is  never  treated  as  a  reason  for 
not  enforcing  them,  and  even  the  most  meaningless  and 
absurd  of  them  all  is  executed  with  the  same  puerile  pedan- 
try in  virtue  of  which  the  sentry,  told  off  to  stand  guard 
over  the  rose  to  which  the  Empress  Catherine  once  took  a 
fancy,  was  maintained  there  for  half  a  century  after  the 
rose  had  withered  and  the  Empress  mouldered  away  in  dust. 


The  RUSSIAN  CENSURE.  263 

Thus  the  law  ordains  that  all  books  and  papers  in  the  pos- 
session of  strangers  or  natives  crossing  the  Russian  frontier 
be  taken  from  them  and  forwarded  to  the  Censure  Commit- 
tee of  the  nearest  city,  which  may  be  hundreds  of  miles  dis- 
tant from  the  traveller's  destination;  and  the  circumstance 
that  these  are  well-known  Russian  works,  published  in  the 
Empire  and  bearing  the  impriniatitr  of  the  Censure  on  the 
flyleaf,  is  not  enough  to  ensure  their  exemption  from  this 
costly  and  irritating  formality.^  It  is  only  fair  to  say  that 
even  to  this  rule  there  are  some  exceptions:  "A  foreigner 
has  the  right  to  take  with  him  one  note-book,  one  almanac, 
one  small  dictionary,  one  album,  and  one  keepsake  "  {sic), 
if,  in  addition  to  other  negative  characteristics,  to  be  veri- 
fied at  the  custom-house,  they  are  found  to  contain  nothing 
subversive  of  morality  and  are  not  of  a  religious  or  politi- 
cal character.  Rubinstein's  musical  manuscripts  were 
taken  from  him  in  this  way,  as  they  aroused  the  suspicions 
of  the  officials,  and  the  Censure  in  the  fulness  of  time  either 
confiscated  or  lost  them.  The  maestro  never  saw  them  any 
more.  A  traveller  who  should  take  his  Encyclopcedia  Brif- 
annica  with  him  would  probably  be  annoyed  to  see  himself 
deprived  of  it  on  the  frontier,  and  exasperated  to  find,  on 
receiving  it  back,  that  hundreds  of  paragraphs  had  been 
blackened  with  printer's  ink,  and  scores  of  pages  cut  out  in 
a  most  slovenly  manner.  It  must  not  be  forgotten,  how- 
ever, that,  like  the  blast  tempered  to  the  shorn  lamb,  this 
seemingly  harsh  treatment  is  deprived  of  a  little  of  its  sting 
by  the  provision  made  in  section  195  of  the  Censure  Laws, 
which  thoughtfully  enacts  that  the  Censors  are  to  fold  up 
carefully  the  pages  thus  cut  out  and,  at  the  desire  and 
expense  of  the  owner,  forward  them  across  the  frontier  by 
post  to  any  address  he  gives. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  a  code  of  regulations 
more  childishly  pedantic,  more  wantonly  irksome  than  the 
306  paragraphs  of  which  the  Censure  Laws  are  composed, 
which,  comprehensive  though  they  are,  constitute  but  the 
warp  of  the  web,  the  woof  being  made  up  of  secret  instruc- 
tions and  galling  prohibitions  which  would  seem  positively 
ludicrous  to  a  Chinaman  and  oppressive  to  a  Turk.^   Editors 


1  Cf.  §  196,  Obs.  I.  of  the  Censure  Laws. 

2  Neither  this  nor  any  other  statement  of  mine  is  intended  to  be  taken 
for  a  figure  of  rhetoric:  it  is  the  expression  of  a  fact.  In  Russia  it  is  still 
the  custom  to  laugh  at  the  Chinese  system  of  government,  and  the  word, 
Kitayshtshhia    {Gallice,  ckinoiserie),  is  a  synonym  for  utter  chaos.     And 


264  RUSSIAN   TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

are  frequently  summoned  by  letter,  as  Members  of  Parlia- 
ment are  by  a  three-line  whip,  and  enter  the  Council  Cham- 
ber in  Theatre  Street  in  fear  and  trembling,  uncertain 
whether  they  have  not  committed  an  expiable  crime,  the 
wages  of  which  is  literary  death.  There  they  listen  in 
silence  to  the  High  Priest  of  public  morality,  who  reads 
out  a  list  of  topics  to  which  they  must  under  no  circum- 
stances allude:  —  the  emigration  to  Brazil,  perhaps,  the 
migrations  of  peasants  in  Russia,  the  famine  in  various 
districts  of  the  interior,  the  frequent  cases  of  armed 
resistance  to  the  authorities,  the  drunken  brawl  between 
Prince  X.  and  Count  Y.  at  Cubat's  on  the  (irand  Morskai'a, 
the  flight  of  T. 's  wife,  the  movements  of  the  Tsar,  Tolstoi's 
Kreii/zer  Sonata,  and  a  dozen  others. 

No  book  or  writing  can  be  exempted  from  the  Censure 
on  the  ground  of  its  imiversally  acknowledged  moral  ten- 
dency, nor  even  for  the  more  intelligible  reason  that  it  has 
already  been  approved  by  the  Censure,  and  published 
scores  of  times  —  nay,  that  it  has  been  specially  recom- 
mended by  the  Ministry  of  Public  Instruction;  and  the 
imprudent  printer  or  publisher  who  should  issue  a  new 
edition  or  a  new  translation  of  the  Imitation  of  Christ  or 
a  Homily  of  John  Chrysostom  without  first  obtaining  the 
written  sanction  of  the  authorities,  would  have  to  atone 
for  his  crime  by  a  maximum  fine  of  ;^40,  and  a  term  of 
imprisonment  not  exceeding  three  months,'  besides  put- 
ting himself  under  a  cloud  of  suspicion  that  would  damp 
his  energies  and  clog  his  efforts  for  years  to  come.  The 
excusable  desire  to  weave  into  the  wording  of  that  portion 
of  the  Censure  Laws'which  is  accessible  to  the  public,  the 
proof  that  these  restrictions  are  not  the  result  of  obscurant- 
ism, but  emanate  from  enlightened  solicitude  for  the  wel- 
fare of  the  people,  gives  rise  to  passages  of  unrivalled 
naivete.  I'hus  the  Censors  are  informed  that  they  need 
not  necessarily  prohibit  a  work,  say  a  history  of  Germany 


yet  Russians  should  know  better.  Privy  Councillor  Vassilieff,  Professor  of 
Chinese  at  the  University  of  St.  Petersburg;,  informs  his  countrymen,  with 
more  enthusiasm  than  befits  a  loyal  Privy  Councillor,  that  "  in  China  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  censure.  Periodicals,  pamphlets,  and  books  are  pub- 
lished without  any  examination  "  ;  and  he  further  communicates  the  interest- 
ing fact  that  when,  on  a  certain  occasion,  "  a  work  was  published  against 
the  reigning  Mandchov  dynasty  in  China,  the  Emperor  contented  himself 
with  answering  the  book  by  a  book."  —  (Vassilieff,  Chinese  Progress,  ^\. 
Petersburg,  1883,  p.  14.) 

1  Cf  Russian  Criminal  Code,  Section  viii.,  §  1024. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  265 

or  a  treatise  of  metaphysics,  on  the  sole  ground  that  rep- 
rehensible opinions  are  quoted  therein,  "  provided  always 
^  that  a  reasonable  amount  of  indignation  be  expressed  by 
the  author  of  the  work,  or  a  sincere  attempt  made  to  refute 
them;"  though,  even  then,  the  question  of  sanctioning  or 
condemning  the  work  is  deemed  too  momentous  to  be 
decided  by  any  one  official;  it  must  be  referred  to  the 
Central  Censure  Committee  for  final  solution,  the  mem- 
bers of  which  are  as  eager  to  compete  with  each  other  in 
patriotic  zeal  as  were  the  French  regicides  after  the  king's 
death,  and  far  more  deeply  impressed  by  the  truth  embodied 
in  the  Russian  proverb,  which  says  that  "a  man's  shirt  is 
nearest  his  own  skin." 

The  Censure  Laws  depend  largely  for  their  efficacy  upon 
the  complete  control  exercised  by  the  Government  over 
printing  otfices,  type  foundries,  booksellers'  shops,  circu- 
lating libraries,  and  all  cognate  trades  and  callings  in  the 
Empire;  and  the  most  analytical  of  German  professors 
would  gape  in  admiration  at  the  wonderful  minuteness  and 
thoroughness  of  this  control.  None  of  the  above-men- 
tioned establishments  can  be  opened  without  a  very  special 
authorization  which  it  is  a  Herculean  labor  to  obtain.  A 
most  searching  inquiry  is  invariably  made  into  the  antece- 
dents of  the  applicant,  the  sins  and  backslidings  of  fathers 
being  visited  upon  sons  and  daughters,  and  the  imprudence 
of  the  children  recoiling  upon  their  parents.  When  the 
permission  is  finally  obtained,  the  heavy  responsibility  that 
goes  with  it,  the  galling  restrictions  that  fetter  the  success- 
ful applicant,  and  his  helpless  dependence  in  business 
matters  upon  a  number  of  venal  officials  devoid  of  scruples 
of  any  kind,  is  sufficient  to  crush  out  whatever  enterprise 
he  may  have  been  originally  endowed  with.  Every  new 
printing  machine,  every  set  of  type  bought,  sold  or  re- 
paired,' every  book  or  pamphlet  destined  to  be  printed, 
must  be  first  announced  to  the  authorities,  j/erified  by 
them,  next  entered  in  detail  in  a  number  of  books,  and 
then  sent  to  the  Censure  for  examination.  If  a  printer 
gets  one  of  his  presses  altered  and  neglects  to  notify  the 

1  My  object  being  to  give  a  faithful  picture  of  things  as  they  are  rather 
than  an  unfavorable  comparison  with  other  countries,  I  think  it  right  to 
point  out  that  in  England,  down  to  1869,  no  one  might  make  or  sell  type 
without  a  special  license,  and  that  every  person  so  licensed  was  obliged  to 
keep  an  account,  in  writing,  of  all  persons  to  whom  types  or  presses  are 
sold;  "  and  to  produce  such  accounts  to  any  Justice  of  the  Peace  requiring 
the  same,  under  a  penalty  of  twenty  pounds." 


^66  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

fact  to  the  authorities,  he  is  fined  five  hundred  roubles, 
besides  being  visited  with  other  and  more  serious  pains 
and  penalties.'  If  a  journal,  having  been  read  by  the 
Censure,  is  sanctioned  for  publication,  but  the  written 
authorization  should  happen  to  be  delayed,  the  printer  who 
dared  to  set  it  up  in  type  and  publish  it,  would  be  fined 
three  hundred  roubles  and  imprisoned  for  three  months, - 
A  person  who  sells  type,  printing  presses,  hectographs,  etc., 
is  in  duty  bound  to  look  upon  the  intending  purchasers  as 
conspirators  against  the  State,  and  must,  in  his  own  inter- 
ests, turn  them  away,  unless  he  knows  them  personally, 
and  is  in  possession  of  their  real  names  and  address.  Nor 
is  this  acquaintance  considered  sufficient  to  allow  of  busi- 
ness relations:  he  can  deal  only  with  authorized  printers, 
and  he  is  exposing  himself  to  a  heavy  punishment  if  he 
part  with  a  set  of  type  without  having  first  seen,  with  his 
own  eyes,  ^the  authorization  to  the  buyers  to  purchase  and 
keep  a  printing  press. 

Permission  to  open  a  bookshop,  a  circulating  library  or 
a  reading-room  is  more  difficult  to  obtain  than  a  railway 
concession,  and  the  melancholy  list  of  pains  and  penalties 
for  infraction  of  any  one  of  a  long  category  of  rules  and 
regulations  makes  the  man's  life  an  intolerable  burden. 
The  petition  or  petitions  —  for  there  is  a  whole  series  of 
them  —  in  which  he  humbly  prays  for  the  boon,  and  in 
the  framing  of  which  as  many  elaborate  formalities  have 
to  be  observed  as  in  the  preparation  of  certain  of  the  spe- 
cifics of  Paracelsus,  is  certain  to  be  rejected,  if  the  apj^li- 
cant's  name  is  found  inscribed  in  the  black  books  of  the 
Secret  Police  —  a  sort  of  recording  angel's  register  in 
which  are  carefully  entered,  to  use  the  Hibernicism  of  a 
late  Member  of  Parliament,  the  record  of  all  the  ])olitical 
crimes  prevented  by  the  vigilance  of  the  j^olice  as  well  as 
the  intentions  and  velleities  of  persons  suspected  of  disaf- 
fection by  the  experienced  thought-readers  of  this  redoubt- 
able Third  Section.  It  occasionally  haj^pens,  for  obvious 
reasons,  that  the  applicant  is  but  a  figure-head,  who  pos- 
sesses neither  the  capital  nor  the  experience  needed  to  carry 
on  the  business,  but  once  he  receives  the  authorization,  the 
real  proprietor,  who  has  no  ])ower  to  remove  him  without 
the  consent  of  the  authorities,  is  merely  a  puppet  in  his 


1  Criminal  Code,  ij  loio. 

2  Criminal  Code,  §  1024. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURfi.  267 

hands.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  point  out  the  abuses  to 
which  these  regulations  give  rise,  especially  should  the 
unfaithful  steward  be  wise  enough  in  his  generation  to 
make  friends  to  himself  of  the  complaisant  Censors. 

But  on  no  profession  in  Russia  does  the  nightmare  of 
the  Censure  weigh  so  heavily  as  upon  journalism;  an  edi- 
tor's life  in  one  of  the  mushroom  cities  of  the  Far  West, 
who  is  one  day  short  of  the  letters  1  and  v,  another  day 
short  of  money,  and  a  few  days  later  on  is  hurled  into  eter- 
nity by  a  pistol-shot,  is  tame  in  comparison  with  the  check- 
ered life  of  some  Russian  journalists. 

To  foreigners  it  is  a  mystery  how  a  capitalist  can  risk  his 
money  in  such  a  precarious  investment  as  a  newspaper; 
Russian  journals,  however,  require  but  a  small  capital  to 
start  them,  and  even  that  seldom  belongs  to  the  editor,  who 
generally  begins  his  journalistic  career  with  credit,  con- 
tinues it  in  debt,  and  frequently  ends  it  in  bankruptcy  and 
ruin. 

Newspapers  may  be  broadly  divided  into  two  classes: 
those  which  cannot  be  even  printed  until  they  have  been 
approved  by  the  authorities,  and  those  which  may  be  printed 
but  cannot  be  published  without  the  authorization  of  the 
Censure ;  the  latter  category  consisting  of  a  very  few  news- 
papers published  exclusively  in  St.  Petersburg  and  Moscow. 
The  division  really  rests  on  a  distinction  with  a  scarcely 
perceptible  difference.  So  trained  are  the  editors  of  the 
latter  class  of  periodicals  that  they  cut  and  mutilate  the 
contributions  destined  for  their  journals  with  the  same 
unerring  judgment,  the  same  unbending  vigor  as  the  paid 
official.  Like  Violenta  in  the  fairy  tale,  some  of  them 
can  almost  smell  the  voice  of  a  man  that  has  the  faintest 
tones  of  disloyalty  in  its  composition.  A  curious  instance 
came  under  my  own  observation  some  time  ago.  An 
acquaintance  of  mine,  whose  name  is  well  and  favorably 
known  in  Russia,  offered  a  story  for  publication  to  the  editor 
of  the  Messenger  of  Europe.  M.  Stassiulevitch  agreed  to 
insert.it  on  condition  that  a  certain  number  of  pages  (eleven 
or  twelve,  I  think)  were  cut  out,  as  he  feared  the  Censure 
might  take  exception  to  them.  The  authoress,  deeming 
M.  Stassiulevitch  p/iis  royaliste  que  le  roi,  refused  to  allow 
her  story  to  be  lopped  and  pruned  by  a  timorous  journal- 
ist, and  laid  the  manuscript  before  the  editor  of  Russian 
Thought  in  Moscow.  M.  Goltseff,  ignorant  of  the  circum- 
stance that  it  had  been  offered  to  another  editor,  read  it  and 


268  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

accepted  it  on  condition  that  certain  passages  (exactly  the 
same  as  those  marked  by  M.  Stassiillevitch)  should  be  erased. 
The  authoress  again  refused  and  sent  the  manuscript  to  the 
editor  of  a  journal  which  is  censured  before  being  printed, 
and  the  Censor  authorized  its  publication,  after  having 
struck  out  the  identical  passage  objected  to  by  the  first 
editor. 

Editors'  intuitions,  correct  though  they  are,  are  not  the 
only  guarantees  against  a  disagreeable  surprise;  the  proof- 
sheets  of  every  newspaper,  review,  and  book,  which  is  theo- 
retically exempt  from  preventive  Censure,  must  remain  a 
certain  time  (calculated  in  hours  for  daily  newspapers  and 
in  days  for  reviews  and  books),  before  publication;  and 
even  on  the  expiration  of  this  term  a  special  authorization 
in  writing  must  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  printer  before 
he  can  allow  the  copies  to  be  removed  from  his  ofifice.  A 
line,  a  word,  nay,  the  absence  of  a  word,  is  quite  enough 
to  cause  the  permission  to  be  refused,  and  the  edition  must 
then  be  printed  anew  in  a  modified  form  at  the  expense  of 
the  editor.  Ihe  Messenger  of  Europe  for  April,  1890, 
while  lying  on  the  table  of  the  Censure  Committee,  awaiting 
the  written  permission  to  appear,  was  read  by  some  zealous 
person  who  objected  to  certain  passages  in  a  paper  by  M. 
Issaieff,  on  the  migration  of  the  peasants  in  Russia.  The 
editor  was  called  upon  to  make  the  necessary  alterations  at 
once,  and  to  reprint  the  whole  edition.'  This  would  have 
taken  him  several  days,  as  it  was  Saturday  morning  when 
the  order  arrived,  and  the  date  on  which  the  review  should 
appear  had  already  come.  The  thing  was  found  imprac- 
ticable, and  the  Censure  tore  out  ticenty  pages  of  the  paper 
by  M.  Issaieff.  In  this  condition  the  review  was  delivered 
to  subscribers.^  Another  still  more  curious  case  occurred 
on  Saturday,  the  28th  of  September,  1889.  The  Universal 
Illustration,  a  weekly  illustrated  paper,  was  already  printed. 
Tens  of  thousands  of  copies  were  lying  addressed  to  the 
subscribers,  ready  to  be  delivered  to  the  post  ofifice  for 
distribution.  The  proof-sheets  had  been  read  by  the  Cen- 
sor, and  approved,  but  at  the  last  moment  the  watchful  eye 
of  a  zealous  literary  policeman  spied  the  disloyal  words: 
"The  journey  of  their  Majesties,"  etc.  The  adjective 
"Imperial  "  had  been  unwittingly  omitted  before  the  word 


1  A  number  of  the  Messenger  of  Europe  contains  about  450  pages. 

2  Pp.  828-849. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  269 

"  Majesties. "  The  Council  was  hastily  summoned  together, 
as  the  proprietor  of  the  journal  declared  that  the  loss  of 
money  and  time  would  be  enormous  if  he  were  compelled 
to  destroy  the  entire  edition  and  print  a  new  one,  on 
account  of  the  accidental  omission  of  a  word,  the  absence 
of  which  would  pass  unnoticed.  The  Council  discussed  the 
question  in  considerable  detail,  and  took  the  opinion  of 
the  Director  of  the  Censure,  after  which  they  decided  that 
the  edition  must  be  annihilated,  and  a  corrected  edition 
printed,  with  the  missing  adjective  "Imperial"  added. 
And  yet  no  people  in  the  world  laugh  more  immoderately 
at  the  absurdities  of  ^e  Turkish  Censure  than  Russian 
journalists. 

So  shadowy,  even  in  theory,  is  the  difference  between  the 
unprivileged  periodicals  that  §  140  of  the  Censure  Laws^ 
forbids  editors  to  touch  upon  any  topic  withdrawn  from 
discussion  by  secret  circulars  or  verbal  prohibitions,  which 
are  as  numerous  as  the  sands  of  the  sea,  and  likewise  com- 
pels them  by  inference  to  insert  without  change  or  com- 
mentary, and  as  coming  from  the  editor  himself,  any 
statement  or  opinion  which  it  may  be  found  desirable  to 
have  propagated.  It  is  the  old  story —  if  the  masters  say 
the  crow  is  white,  the  sen^ants  must  not  assert  it  as  black. 
The  Novoye  Vremya  and  the  Graschdanin  are  continually 
publishing  such  paragraphs,  which  are  occasionally  copied 
by  the  Russophile  press  in  England  as  evidences  of  the 
state  of  public  opinion  in  Russia. 

This  being  the  fate  of  the  dry  wood,  one  can  readily 
imagine  what  happens  to  the  green  wood.  The  sorrows  of 
the  editors  of  unprivileged  journals  are  more  poignant  than 
those  of  Werther,  and  the  knowledge  that  they  are  inevitable 
scares  away  those  rare  writers  whose  literary  talents,  careful 
habits  of  thought,  and  unbending  honesty,  would  prove  an 
inestimable  boon  to  the  Russian  press  were  it  only  as  a 
leaven.  But  the  vacant  places  are  taken  by  rusticated  stu- 
dents, returned  convicts,-  liars  who  boast  of  their  menda- 
ciousness,^  thieves  who  have  "done  their  sentences,"*  and 


1  Laws  concerning  the  Censure  and  the  Press,  printed  at  the  Imperial 
printing  office  in  St.  Petersburg,  1886,  pp.  20,  21. 

2  I  take  it  that  the  total  number  of  convicts  and  ci-devani  political 
suspects  engaged  in  journalism  amounts  to  about  fifty-five  per  cent. 

3  Cf.  Chapter  I. 

4  Cf.  Chapter  IV.,  where  a  short  sketch  is  given  of  Mr.  Goldberg,  the 
respected  journalist,  who  was  convicted  of  stealing,  sentenced  to  a  year's 
imprisonment,  and  having  "done"  his  sentence,  resumed  his  journalistic 


2/0  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS, 

drunken  bullies  \v1k),  when  a  leading  article  is  required, 
have  to  be  sought  for  in  the  taverns  and  disorderly  houses 
of  the  city.^  None  of  the  vigorous  philippics  and  biting 
satires  of  Russian  liberals  are  calculated  to  give  such  a  fair 
itlea  of  the  diftirulties  against  which  an  editor  has  to  con- 
tend as  the  matter-of-fact  description  of  the  steps  he  must 
take  in  order  to  obtain  permission  to  found  a  journal,  and 
the  perspective  that  stretches  out  before  him  when  he  has 
at  last  reached  the  pinnacle  of  his  ambition.  I  will 
endeavor  to  make  that  description  as  brief  as  may  be. 

'J"he  unhappy  mortal  whom  hope  or  despair  drives  into 
journalism  and  who  seeks  to  found  an  organ  of  his  own, 
must  first  of  all  draw  up  a  petition  to  the  Minister  of  the 
Interior,  giving  his  name,  address,  profession,  the  type  of 
journal  he  proposes  to  found,  its  size,  detailed  programme, 
a  list  of  the  topics  it  will  touch  upon,  its  name,  price,  the 
number  of  times  it  will  appear  every  week,  an  autobiog- 
raphy of  himself,  and  a  biogra])hy  of  the  responsdile  editor, 
together  with  the  baptismal  certificates  and  all  other  oiticial 
documents  relating  to  their  life  and  activity.^  The  omis- 
sion of  any  of  these  details  would  cause  the  petition  to  be 
sent  back.  Such  is  the  present  posture  of  affairs  in  Russia 
that  out  of  every  ten  such  petitions,  the  w-riters  of  which 
were  found  to  be  without  reproach  (no  one  in  Russia  can 
be  truly  said  to  be  without  fear  except  certain  religious 
fanatics),  nine  would  be  returned  at  once  with  an  emphatic 
negative.  But  suppose  the  circumstances  to  be  unusually 
favorable  and  the  petition  allowed  to  take  its  course;  a  pri- 
vate inciuiry  would  be  next  set  on  foot  by  the  police  of  the 
city  into  the  antecedents  of  the  applicant,  and  in  this  inves- 
tigation the  Governor-General  of  the  province  would  lie 
asked  to  take  part;  the  books  of  the  secret  police  would 
be  overhauled,  and  the  correspondence  on  the  subject 
would  swell  to  an  unwieldy  size,  while  the  petitioner  would 
be  obtaining  an  insight  into  the  meaning  of  hoj^e  deferred. 

But  let  us  suppose  all  these  formalities  paid  for  and  past, 
and  the  applicant's  perse\erence  rewarded  by  the  desired 
permission  to  found  a  journal  in  Kieff  or  Kazan.      His 

duties.  I  am  personally  acquainted  with  two  other  very  well  known  Rus- 
sian journalists  of  still  worse  antecedents,  whose  history  I  learned  long 
after  I  had  met  them  in  respectable  society. 

i  One  of  the  most  forcible  leader-writers  on  the  staff  of  the  Afoscow 
Gazette,  under  Katkoff's'editorship,  answers  to  this  description.  Another 
is  M.  Syf schevsky,  one  of  the  best  literary  critics  of  the  provincial  press. 

2  Cf.  Censure  Laws,  ^^  119. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  2/1 

troubles  begin  forthwith.  His  staff  falls  very  short  of  his 
own  modest  ideal,  and  is  as  casual  as  the  guests  at  the  wed- 
ding party  described  in  the  Gospel,  being  composed  of 
stragglers  and  vagabonds  taken  from  the  highways  and  by- 
ways; reporters  who  know  neither  shorthand'  nor  gram- 
matical longhand;  writers  of  weekly  letters  who  are  in  the 
pay  of  his  rival;  correspondents  who  take  bribes  when  they 
can  get  them;  leader-writers  who  have  as  much  claim  to  be 
termed  journalists  as  Carlyle's  distressed  needlewoman, 
with  an  occasional  professor  eager  to  change  his  fancied 
talents  into  the  small  coin  of  the  empire;  in  a  word,  men 
in  whose  tragic  careerUournalism  is  but  a  fleeting  episode 
—  a  halfway  house  on  me/aci/is  descensus  Averni. 

It  is  no  easy  matter  to  make  a  web  of  bottled  hay,  but ' 
Russians  are  justly  famous  for  their  optimistic  ingenuity, 
and  so  trifling  are  the  drafts  they  present  on  Fortune's  bank, 
that  the  editor  I  have  just  described  would  deem  himself 
lucky  indeed  were  he  free  to  put  the  services  of  even  his 
motley  crew  to  the  best  account.  But  he  might  as  well  sigh 
for  the  moon.  Suppose  him  fortunate  enough  to  make  the 
important  discovery  that  for  years  past,  in  some  town  or  dis- 
trict, the  Government  had  been  systematically  defrauded  to  a 
fabulous  extent,  or  that  the  judges  in  one  of  the  law  courts 
had  made  a  practice  of  selling  the  justice  or  injustice  which 
they  had  paid  for  the  privilege  of  administering —  he  is 
forbidden  to  hint  even  remotely  at  the  mere  possibility  of 
such  enormities,  if  the  price  of  his  journal  for  a  year  be  less 
than  seven  roubles.  If  it  exceeded  this  sum,  and  the  cir- 
culation was  therefore  presumably  smaller,  he  would  enjoy 
the  right  to  hem  and  haw  and  beat  vaguely  about  the  bush, 
suppressing  names,  and  not  mentioning  places;-  but  even 
this  is  no  more  than  a  theoretical  right  which  no  Censor  in 
the  enjoyment  of  his  normal  faculties  would  allow  him  to 
exercise.  If  the  editor  learns  from  the  most  trustworthy 
source  that  the  Government  intends  to  introduce  some  new 
project  of  law,  paragraph  §  loo  strictly  forbids  him  to  make 
his  information  public;  and  were  the  law  less  emphatic  the 
Censors  would  not  fail  to  make  good  the  omission. 

But  if  the  publication  of  news  received  at  first  hand  is 
forbidden  fruit  to  a  Russian  journalist,  it  seems  natural  to 


1  I  have  heard  of  only  three  Russian  reporters  who  can  read  or  write 
shorthand. 

2  Cf.  Censure  Laws,  \\  98,  99. 


272  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

suppose  that  they  have  full  liberty  to  use  their  scissors  and 
paste  upon  all  books  and  journals  expressly  authorized  by 
the  Censure  to  appear  and  circulate  through  the  Empire. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  paragraph  63  of  the  Censure 
Laws  absolutely  forbids  them  to  reproduce  or  even  summa- 
rize any  article  or  item  of  news  published  in  authorized 
books,  journals,  and  reviews,  without.lirst  asking  an  express 
authorization  in  each  particular  case,  which  the  Censors  are 
extremely  chary  of  according.  Thus  in  Kiefl  and  Odessa, 
during  the  disturbances  at  the_  Universities,  the  press  was 
strictly  forbidden  to  allude  even  remotely  to  the  subject; 
and  when  the  University  of  the  foriiier  city  was  closed,  six 
jtnirnals  of  Odessa  were  forbidden  to  communicate  the  in- 
telligence to  their  readers  or  even  to  copy  the  details  which 
the  seventh,  an  anti-Jewish  organ,  was  permitted  to  publish. 
The  real  cause  of  the  loss  of  the  steamer  P'cs/a^thrce  years 
ago,  was  carefully  hidden  from  the  Odessa  public,  no  news- 
papers of  that  city  being  allowed  to  discuss  the  subject, 
while  the  press  of  Sebastopol  analyzed  it  in  detail.  And 
yet  in  both  these  cases  all  the  newspapers  were  equally 
subject  to  preventive  Censure. 

Driven  off  the  debatable  ground  of  politics  the  hopeful 
editor  takes  refuge  in  the  vast  domain  of  social  topics,  art, 
and  literature,  endeavoring  to  give  a  faithful  picture  of  the 
events  of  the  day,  "to  shoot  folly  as  it  flies."  An  interest- 
ing law  suit,  a  local  cause  celcbir,  may  possibly  be  going 
on  in  one  of  the  law  courts,  and  as  the  most  lengthy  account 
of  the  proceedings  in  the  organ  of  his  most  serious  competi- 
tors is  fully  two  days  behind,  he  resolves  to  steal  a  march 
on  his  rival  and  take  the  lead.  Engaging  at  considerable 
expense  a  reporter  who  can  write  a  little  shorthand,  he 
prints  on  Tuesday  night,  for  Wednesday's  issue,  a  verba- 
tim report  of  Monday's  i)roceedings,  intending  to  astonish 
the  town  by  his  unparalleled  expeditiousness.  But  the  wary 
Censor  coldly  reminds  him  that  §  77  of  the  Censure  Laws 
absolutely  forbids  him  to  publish  any  such  report  of  law 
cases  now  or  at  any  other  time,  as  this  is  a  very  special 
privilege  not  lightly  accorded  to  provincial  journals. 
Among  the  eight  newspapers  that  actually  appear  in  Odessa 
only  one  enjoys  this  rare  pri\  ilege,  and  that  one  is  the 
rabid  anti-Jewish  organ  alluded  to  above. 

Again  discomfited,  the  editor,  if  not  wholly  disheart- 
ened, starts  in  search  of  other  items  of  intelligence,  and 
discovers,  perhaps,  that  the  Mir  or  Peasants'  Commune 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  2/3 

has  passed   certain   resolutions,   or  that  the  Assembly  of 
Nobles  has  adopted  strong  measures  against  some  long- 
standing evil.     He  writes  one  or  two  paragraphs,  and  pos-     , 
sibly  a  leading  article,   on  the   subject,   hoping  that  the  ' 
Censor  will  allow  them  to  pass  unchallenged.     But   the   • 
vigilant  olScial  returns  the  proofs  marked  with  a  red  pen- 
cil, and  the  words,  "See  §  82  of  the  Censure  Laws,"  which 
strictly  forbids  the  publication  of  items  of  news  on  either 
of  the  topics  just  named  without  a  special  authorization 
from  the  governor  in  each  particular  case;  and  the  gov- 
ernor may  be  two  hundred  miles  distant  at  the  time. 

Thus  a  Russian  journalist,  like  his  Spanish  colleague 
described  by  Beaumarchais,  if  he  only  eschews  politics, 
religious  and  social  topics,  steers  clear  of  political  econ- 
omy, finance,  philosophy,  and  certain  epochs  of  history,  is 
careful  not  to  offend  persons  who,  whatever  their  ofificial 
position,  can  resent  fancied  insults,  sedulously  avoids  such 
iDurning  questions  as  the  taxes,  the  laws,  the  economic  con- 
dition of  the  peasantry,  the  press,  medicine,  education, 
and  the  partial  famines  in  the  empire,  enjoys  considerable 
liberty  in  the  choice  of  topics  for  his  paragraphs  and  themes 
for  his  leading  articles,  subject,  of  course,  to  the  caprice 
of  a  timorous  Censor,  who  is  painfully  aware  that  his  career 
may  be  irreparably  destroyed  by  a  single  mistake  on  the  side 
of  indulgence. 

These  and  numerous  other  topics  being  removed  from 
the  purview  of  journalism,  a  newspaper  is  generally  very 
uninteresting  reading  indeed.  But  there  are  occasions 
when  a  dictionary  or  an  old  almanac  are  read  with  avidity; 
"a  crab,"  says  the  Russian  proverb,  "  is  a  fish  when  you  can 
get  nothing  more  like  one."  But  let  us  suppose  the  news- 
paper at  last  made  up,  the  latest  telegrams  received,  and 
the  reporters  gone  home  for  the  night.  The  editor's  next 
step  is  to  obtain  the  Censor's  imprimatur.  At  about  eleven 
o'clock,  P.M.,  a  messenger  is  despatched  with  the  proofs, 
which  the  wearied  official,  who  has  been  working,  or  pur- 
porting to  work,  all  day,  takes  and  reads  at  his  leisure, 
keeping  the  office-boy  waiting  generally  for  two  hours  on 
ordinary  occasions,  and  three  or  four  on  public  or  private 
holidays,  when  he  goes  to  the  play,  or  spends  his  evening 
in  jovial  company.  It  is  comparatively  easy  to  imagine 
the  feelings  of  an  energetic  editor  who,  after  having  impa- 
tiently waited  for  several  hours  for  the  authorization  to 
print,  keeping  his  workmen  idle,  ready  to  begin  work  at  a 


274  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

moment's  notice,  at  last  receives  back  the  proofs  at  two 
or  three  o'clock  a.m.  with  the  leading  article,  which 
formed  the///r^  de  resistance^  rejected  ///  to  to,  the  cleverly- 
written  feuilleton  kept  back  for  further  consideration,  and 
the  only  two  interesting  items  of  news  struck  out.'  This 
means  that  about  one  whole  page  is  left  a  perfect  blank 
which  it  is  his  duty  straightway  to  fill  up;  for  w^ere  he  to 
allow  his  paper  to  appear  with  a  blank  s])ace,  or  even  with 
too  suggestive  asterisks,  his  journal  would  cease  to  appear, 
and  his  own  place  would  know  him  no  more.  As  he  has 
now  no  time  to  write  leading  articles,  and  what  is  still  more 
important,  no  right  to  trouble  the  Censor's  well-earned 
sl^p,  he  is  forced  to  fall  back  upon  stale  news,  oft-repeated 
anecdotes  of  famous  men,  recipes  from  authorized  cookery 
books  and  other  ordinary  makeweights,  none  of  which  he 
can  use  unless  they  have  been  previously  approved  by  the 
identical  official,  who  now  censures  his  journal.  This 
vamping  up  of  events  long  past  as  news  of  the  day  is  now 
so  common  in  Russia  that  it  excites  no  manner  of  dissatis- 
faction among  readers.  In  the  .SV.  Petersburg  Svett  o\  the 
30th  October,  1887,  we  find  the  important  intelligence 
that — "In  1882  the  population  of  Moscow  amounted  to 
753,469  souls,  and  that  of  St.  Petersburg  to  861,303." 
This  reminds  one  of  I^lia's  unimaginative  friend  who, 
when  at  a  loss  for  a  smart  paragraph,  was  wont  to  commu- 
nicate the  interesting  information  that  —  "It  is  not  gener- 
ally known  that  the  three  balls  outside  a  pawnbroker's 
establishment  are  the  ancient  arms  of  Lombardy." 

I  have  myself  observed  several  cases  of  newspapers  being 
fettered  and  expurgated  till  they  ceased  to  exist,  and  I  have 
had  my  own  leading  articles  cut  and  mutilated,  and  wholly 
forbidden.  But  as  in  these  cases  it  is  always  desirable  to 
have  published  testimony  rather  than  the  unsupported 
assertions  of  individuals,  it  may  be  interesting  to  give 
the  experience  of  a  provincial  journal  as  described  in  the 
review.  Memoirs  of  the  Father/atid,  at  a  time  when  the 
Censure  was  much  less  severe  than  at  present.  "The  pro- 
hibitions were  numerous,  or  rather  innumerable,  and  the 
upshot  of  them  all  was  simply  this,  that  no  matter  what 
topic  the  editorial  staff  found  it  needful  to  discuss,  it  was 

1  This  is  no  imaginary  case.  I  was  once  present  on  the  return  of  the 
office-boy  bringing  the  proofs,  with  the  most  important  i^orlions  of  the  news- 
paper struck  out,  and  heard  the  editor  apostropliize  the  absent  Censor  in 
language  that  was  quite  equal  to  the  occasion. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  2/5 

always  'a  very  delicate  question.'  .  .  .  They  were  for- 
bidden to  allude  to  the  fact  that  letters  were  being  con- 
stantly lost  in  the  Post  Office  or  delivered  to  the  addresses 
with  broken  seals  and  opened/  because  the  Post  Office  was 
under  the  Governor-General,  and  an  article  or  even  an 
allusion  to  the  matter  would  tend  to  cast  a  shadow  on  the 
good  government  of  the  province;  neither  was  it  lawful  to 
point  out  the  unsatisfactory  condition  of  the  Moscow  Tract, 
and  for  the  same  reason;  it  was  strictly  forbidden  to  dis- 
cuss the  terrible  fire  that  had  devastated  the  city,  to  com- 
plain of  the  exorbitant  prices  of  provisions,  of  the  lack  of 
corn  for  the  people,  etc.,  and  the  Censure  drew  a  red  pen- 
cil across  a  passage  in  which  a  comparison  was  instituted 
between  the  prices  of  provisions  in  Irkutsh  and  those  tliat 
obtained  in  St.  Petersburg.  ...  It  was  forbidden  to 
allude  to  the  Benevolent  Society  because  the  Governor- 
General  was  its  President.  The  distribution  of  relief  to 
the  sufferers  from  the  fire,  which  was  arranged  in  such  a 
way  that  the  owners  of  large  storehouses  received  thousands 
of  roubles  while  the  real  sufferers  were  left  to  vegetate  in 
holes  amid  the  ruins  of  their  houses,  was  also  placed  upon 
the  index  of  forbidden  subjects.  ...  It  was  not  lawful 
to  write  a  word  about  statistics,  because  the  Censor  was  the 
Secretary  of  the  Statistical  Committee,  nor  about  the  pecu- 
lation connected  with  the  hiring  of  the  theatre,  etc.,  etc. 
.  .  .  And  as  if  all  this  were  not  enough,  it  was  deemed 
almost  a  crime  that  the  editor  and  the  staff  had  never  once 
praised  a  general  in  this  paper."  ' 

It  is,  perhaps,  superfluous  to  remark  that  the  principles 
by  which  Censors  are  guided  in  forbidding  or  permitting 
leading  articles,  stories,  etc.,  are  as  difficult  to  discover  as 
those  which  determined  Buridan's  ass  to  choose  one  hay- 
stack in  preference  to  the  other.  What  was  permissible 
yesterday  is  illegal  to-day,  aiid  the  article  that  may  appear 
without  prejudice  in  the  newspaper  printed  on  one  side  of 
the  sheet,  would  amount  to  constructive  high  treason  if  it 
appeared  in  the  journal  published  on  the  other.  One  of 
the  most  recent  instances  occurred  last  February,  when  the 
Graphic  crossed  the  Russian  frontier  with  an  illustration 
presenting  the  Tsarewitch  with  a  tiger  killed  at  his  feet. 

1  This  practice  is  more  widespread  than  ever  it  was  before,  and  is  likely 
to  continue  so  until  vigorous  representations  on  the  subject  are  made  by 
foreign  Governments  to  the  Russian  Foreign  Office. 

2  Alemoirs  of  the  Fatherland,  March,  i88i,  p.  37. 


t 

276  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

It  would  he  as  difficult  to  discover  anything  hostile  to  Rus- 
sia in  this  picture  as  to  find  the  philosopher's  stone  in  a 
wagon  of  Newcastle  coals.  But  the  Censor,  with  sight 
sharpened  by  prospective  hunger,  descried  disrespect  to 
Imperial  Majesty  therein,  and  blackened  out  the  offending 
cut.  A  fortnight  afterwards  the  Graphic  reprinted  the 
illustration,  and  with  it  a  fac-simile  of  the  blackened  page 
as  it  was  delivered  to  Russian  readers,  with  the  evident 
object  of  casting  ridicule  upon  the  Censors.  Vet  this  was 
allowed  into  the  country  without  let  or  hindrance.^ 

An  enterprising  editor  with  a  faic  capital  at  his  back 
would  naturally  spare  no  pains  or  money  to  procure  special 
telegrams  from  the  chief  cities  of  Europe,  until  he  made 
th5  painful  discovery  that  it  would  profit  himself  and  his 
readers  just  as  much  if  he  distributed  his  money  in  bribes 
to  the  official  meteorologist  in  the  hope  of  obtaining  better 
weather  than  his  fellows.  All  such  telegrams,  whether  the 
journal  in  which  they  are  destined  to  appear  be  privileged 
or  the  reverse,  must  first  go  to  the  Ministry  of  the  Interior; 
and,  should  the  nature  of  the  topics  seem  to  render  it 
advisable,  to  the  other  ministries  concerned.  This  pro- 
cedure, which  may  sometimes  be  perfectly  justifiable,  can 
always  be  used  by  the  Censure  to  delay  the  appearance  of 
important  telegrams  and  to  thwart  the  intentions  of  the 
editor.  No  newspaper  in  Russia  enjoys  such  privileges  as 
the  Graschdanin,  which  is  subsidized  by  the  Emperor. 
And  this  is  an  instance  of  how  the  Graschdanin  testifies  to 
the  efificiency  of  the  telegraph  Censure :  —  "  We  were  unable 
to  insert  the  telegrams  of  our  special  correspondents  this 
morning,  owing  to  the  circumstance  that  the  Censor  ap- 
pointed to  examine  all  telegrams  was  not  at  home  all  night 
—  at  least  he  had  not  come  home  up  to  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning."  - 

The  advertisements,  which  afford  no  scope  for  the  display 
of  an  editor's  energy  and  enterprise,  would  seem  to  be 
the  only  portion  not  dished  up  by  government  officials. 
And  yet  even  they  do  not  constitute  an  exception  to  the 
rule:  all  advertisements,  whatever  their  character,  must 
be  carefully  censured,  in  the  first  instance  by  the  police, 
and  then  by  those  other  departments  of  the  State  which  are 

1  Not  being  in  Russia  or  England,  I  did  not  see  either  of  the  copies  of 
the  Graphic,  and  my  description  of  the  illustration  is  founded  merely  on 
hearsay. 

*  Graschdanin,  27th  October,  1889. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  2']'] 

authorized  to  take  cognizance  of  tlie  tilings  advertised. 
Thus  an  advertisement  recommending  or  offering  for  sale 
tickets  for  a  foreign  State  lottery  would  have  to  be  expressly 
approved  by  the  Minister  of  Finances,  a  patent  medicine 
puff  by  the  Medical  Council,  etc.  This  law  is  very  rigor- 
ously enforced,  and  the  editor  who  should  presume  to 
publish  an  advertisement,  even  for  a  cook  or  a  coachman, 
without  the  written  authorization  of  the  police  officer,  who 
possibly  may  be  absent  from  home  or  with  faculties  too 
clouded  to  allow  him  to  sign  his  name,  would  be  put  on 
his  trial  and  infallibly  punished.  I  have  sometimes  seen 
three  editors  on  their  trial  together  for  this  crime,  and  1 
remember  M.  Liberman,  of  the  Tiflis  Listok,  who  was  tried 
more  than  once  for  this  offence,  and  always  found  guilty 
and  punished.' 

It  would  seem  that  when  all  these  minute  regulations 
have  been  literally  complied  with,  the  paper  brought  out, 
and  the  editor's  troubles  over  for  the  moment,  there  is  no 
reason  why  his  recollections  of  them  should  be  embittered 
by  a  feeling  of  constant  apprehension  for  the  results.  And 
yet,  strange  as  it  may  appear,  he  is  never  wholly  free  from 
this  feverish  uneasiness.  For  if  the  Censor  have  failed  to 
weed  out  every  trace  of  Liberalism,  if  he  have  neglected 
to  inquire  into  the  hidden  meaning  of  some  equivocal 
word  or  allusion,  he  may,  and  very  probably  will,  be  con- 
dignly  punished,  but  all  the  real  thunderbolts  are  sure  to 
fall  upon  the  devoted  head  of  the  editor,  whose  journal 
may  be  suspended  for  six  months  or  forbidden  ever  again 
to  appear,  in  virtue  of  Section  154.  For,  as  I  remarked 
above,  printed  words  are  looked  upon  in  Russia  as  cater- 
pillars, and  their  creators  are  held  responsible  not  only  for 
their  existence  but  likewise  for  the  acts  of  the  future  but- 
terflies. The  manifest  injustice  of  this  law  cannot  fail  to 
strike  the  unbiassed  reader.  A  journalist  hands  in  the 
proof  sheets  of  his  newspaper  and  virtually  says  to  the  Cen- 
sor: "I  will  print  only  as  much  of  this  as  you  may  declare 
desirable;  any  passage  across  which  you  draw  your  pencil 
will  disappear,  any  interpolations  you  suggest  will  at  once 
be  inserted;  I  am  wholly  in  your  hands."  Numerous 
erasures  and  additions  are  then  made  by  the  Censor,  who 
at  last  says:  "By  the  authority  vested  in  me  by  the  Govern- 
ment, I  approve  this  day's  issue  and  sanction  its  publica- 


1  Cf.,  for  instance,  the  Law  Journal  of  the  21st  December,  1887. 


278  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

tion."  And  yet  if  the  authorities  be  dissatisfied  with  this 
authorized  version,  the  unfortunate  editor  will  suffer  quite 
as  much  as  if  he  had  surreptitiously  i)rinted  the  offending 
passages.  Thus  out  of  nine  journals  suspended  during  the 
short  space  of  nine  months,  five  were  newspapers  that 
passed  through  the  hands  of  the  preventive  Censor,  whose 
every  suggestion  had  been  scru])ulously  carried  out;  among 
them  w^ere  the  Saraf off  Leaf,  which  was  suspended  for  one 
month,  the  Odessa  Messenger  for  three,  the  Siberian  Mes- 
se?igeriox  iowx,  and  the  Siberian  Gazette  for  eight  months.^ 

One  of  the  usual  measures  adopted  by  the  Government 
against  journals  to  the  existence  of  which  it  is  desirable  to 
put  a  speedy  end  consists  in  the  refusal  to  appoint  a  Censor 
in  the  city  in  which  they  appear.  In  all  Russia  there  are 
but  eight  Censure  committees,  besides  those  of  the  capital; 
and  four  of  the  eight  are  crowded  together  in  the  Baltic 
Provinces.  The  (Government,  by  the  exercise  of  i)aternal 
indulgence,  may  allow  an  official  employed  in  the  service 
of  the  Crow^n  to  censure  a  journal  founded  in  a  provincial 
town,  without  regarding  him  as  an  official  Censor;  but  this 
is  a  privilege  and  may  at  any  time  be  withdrawn.  Thus 
one  occasionally  jeads  announcements  like  the  following: 
"The  censuring  of  the  Dniepr  {2.\\  excellent  daily  paper)  is 
transferred  from  Yekaterinoslav  to  Moscow,"  i.e.,  to  the 
distance  of  over  a  thousand  versts,  so  that  if  the  proofs  of 
Thursday's  issue  were  posted  to  the  Censor  on  Wednesday 
evening  at  six  o'clock,  they  might  in  the  most  favorable 
case  be  delivered  into  his  hands  on  the  following  Saturday 
evening  at  seven  or  eight  o'clock,  and  reach  the  editor  on 
the  following  Wednesday,  exactly  a  week  after  they  had 
been  posted  ;  in  winter  they  would  take  occasionally  as  long 
as  a  fortnight  to  go  and  return.  Of  course  the  journal 
immediately  ceased  to  appear.  In  1881  the  editor  of  the 
Tver  Messenger  was  ordered  to  send  in  future  the  proof 
sheets  of  his  journal  to  Moscow  to  be  censured,  in  conse- 
quence of  which  it  ceased  to  exist.- 

If  the  editor  finds  that  the  sale  of  his  journal  is  unfavor- 
ably affected  by  its  high  price,  he  is  powerless  to  lower  it, 
and  if  he  agrees  to  take  the  yearly  subscription  in  easy 
instalments,  he  has  committed  a  crime,  not  provided  for 
by  any  published  or  secret  law,  but  for  which  he  will  have 


1  Cf.  Russian  Courier,  i7tli  yaniiary,  1889;  Novosti,  igtli  January,  1889. 

2  Russian  Antiquity,  August,  18S8. 


The    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  2^9 

to  pay  dearly;  ^  if  it  appear  only  six  times  a  week,  and  he 
wishes  to  issue  it  on  every  day  of  the  seven,  like  the  papers 
of  his  rivals,  he  might  as  well  propose  to  lay  claim  to  the 
Imperial  throne  as  to  give  effect  to  his  wish;  if  he  is 
anxious  to  enlarge  the  dimensions  of  the  journal  by  a 
few  square  inches,  he  would  infallibly  ruin  himself  and  it, 
were  he  to  do  it  without  a  special  authorization,  which  it 
is  most  difficult  to  obtain  and  even  dangerous  to  ask  for. 

In  Russian  society,  bereft,  as  it  is,  of  public  opinion, 
and  of  public  conscience,  which  lies  at  the  root  of  all 
healthy  public  opinion,  Censors  are,  to  some  extent, 
pariahs,  or,  at  least,  men  of  an  inferior  caste.  This  is 
keenly  felt  by  the  few  Censors  who  were  originally  des- 
tined for  something  better  —  by  the  two  Censor  poets, 
Maikoff  and  Polonsky,  for  instance,  who  black  out  pages 
of  Huxley  and  Buckle,  Swinburne  and  Byron,  in  the 
morning,  write  "  inspired"  pseans  to  liberty  and  the' Muses 
in  the  evening,  and  at  all  times  whan  poetry  or  the 
Censure  is  mentioned,  guiltily  "hang  their  heads,  and 
a'  that."  One  may  reasonal3ly  iind  fault  with  a  man 
for  bartering  away  his  birthright  for  a  handful  of  silver  and 
a  ribbon  to  stick  in  his  coat,  but,  the  purchase  once  con- 
cluded, one  can  scarcely  blame  him  for  guarding  his  acqui- 
sition with  the  aggressive  jealousy  of  a  miser.  The  fact 
that  most  Censors  do  this  is  the  true  explanation  of  the 
ridiculous  scrupulosity  with  which  they  object  to  the  most 
harmless  article,  scent  treason  in  a  note  of  interrogation, 
and  heresy  in  the  form  of  a  letter  of  the  alphabet,"  thus 
rendering  their  own  lives  supremely  miserable,  and  driving 
editors  to  the  verge  of  madness. 

This  painful  anxiety  is  natural  enough  on  the  part  of 
men  who,  to  employ  the  technical  terms  of  the  law,  "can 
be  dismissed  from  the  service  for  misdemeanors  which  it 


1  Last  January  M.  PobedonostsefF  wrote  a  secret  complaint  to  the 
Minister  of  the  Interior,  to  the  effect  that  several  quasi-Liberal  periodicals, 
among  which  he  mentioned  the  Aovosti,  the  Obse}~oer,  Nablindatel,  the 
Nort/ierti  Messenger,  the  Week,  and  the  Messenger  of  Europe,  were  de- 
moralizing the  youth  of  the  Empire  by  allowing  them  to  pay  the  yearly 
subscription  in  instalments.  He  requested  the  Minister  to  forbid  this 
practice  in  future,  and  to  deal  more  severely  in  general  with  these  pernicious 
publications. 

-  That  such  trivial  matters  as  these  do  not  always  depend  upon  the 
caprice  of  the  individual  Censors  is  evident  from  the  law  cited  /;/  extenso  in 
a  former  number  of  this  journal,  according  to  which  all  books  and  articles 
in  the  Russian  language  in  which  the  letter  t  is  formed  as  in  English,  instead 
of  like  an  N  upside  down,  are  forbidden. 


280  RUSSIAN    TRAtTS    AND    TERRORS. 

is  impossible  to  prove  that  they  committed.  And  it  is  here- 
by decreed  that  no  i)etition  or  explanation  offered  by  any 
individual  so  dismissed  shall  be  entertained  or  received."  ' 
One  day  the  Minister  of  Justice,  displeased  at  some  article, 
insisted  that  the  Censor  who  sanctioned  its  publication 
should  be  punished.  "Certainly,"  was  the  conciliatory 
reply,  "but  would  it  not  be  as  well  if  we  first  called  him 
up  and  heard  what  he  has  to  say  to  the  charge?  "  "No,  it 
would  not,"  angrily  replied  the  Minister  (Count  Panin); 
"I  insist  on  his  being  punished  first.  Afterwards,  if  you 
wish,  you  may  ask  him  for  explanations."^ 

Treatment  of  this  kind  drives  the  Censors  to  extremities 
which  would  raise  a  smile  on  the  lips  of  a  Russian  tscJiin- 
ovnik,  if  related  of  the  Turks.  An  authentic  list  of  inci- 
dents of  this  kind  as  a  volume  of  humorous  anecdotes  would 
be  certain  of  success.  I  shall  mention  two  as  illustrations. 
When  the  so-called  Mazeppa  dance  was  invented  in  Paris, 
a  humorous  article  on  the  subject  appeared  in  the  organ  of 
the  Imperial  Academy  of  Sciences  in  St.  Petersburg,  in  the 
course  of  which  the  writer  hazarded  the  conjecture  that  in 
a#short  time  the  new  dance  would  spread  over  all  Europe. 
This  observation  seemed  wantonly  seditious  to  the  Minis- 
ter, who,  discovering  therein  a  covert  sneer  at  Russia, 
called  up  Dtschkin,  the  editor,  rei)rimanded  him  very 
severely,  and  threatened  him  with  the  utmost  rigor  of  the 
law.^ 

Private  letters  are  censured  on  much  the  same  lines  as 
books  and  newspapers,  although  it  is  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  very  many  of  them  should  escape.  There  are  Censors 
of  private  correspondence  as  there  are  Censors  of  science, 
art,  and  literature,  and  the  results  of  their  labors  are  regis- 
tered in  the  books  of  the  Recording  Angels  of  the  'I  bird 
Section,''  where  human  misery  is  being  eternally  brewed  as 
in  a  witch's  cauldron,  where  the  thread  of  life  of  many  a 
young  and  harmless  man  and  woman  has  been  ruthlessly 
cut.  The  broad  principle  observed  in  the  Censure  of  Pri- 
vate Correspondence  is  that  a  certain  fixed  percentage  of 
letters  taken  at  random,  is  opened  and  read,  besides  all 
letters  to  and  from  persons  whom  there  is  any  real  or  fan- 


^  Cf.  Russian  Antiquity,  March,  1890,  p.  635. 

2  Russian  Antiquity,  September,  1890,  p.  618. 

3  Novoye  V'leviya,  2iid  March,  1890;  A/ovosti,  2nd  March,  1890;  Russian 
Antiquity,  March,  1890. 

•*  The  name  of  tlie  Russian  secret  poUce. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  28 1 

cied  grounds  for  suspecting  of  hostility  to  the  Government. 
My  own  experience  of  the  practice  was  varied,  curious, 
and  unpleasant.  One  evening  an  acquaintance  of  mine 
rushed  breathless  into  my  room,  exclaiming:  "What  do 
you  mean  by  enclosing  a  photograph  of  your  soul  in  every 
letter  you  send  to  your  friends,  just  as  if  there  were  no  one 
to  read  them  but  yourself  and  they?"  "Are  my  letters 
then  really  tampered  with?"  I  asked.  "Well,  yes,  I 
should  think  they  were.  Just  listen  to  this  music  and  tell 
me  who  composed  it.  'My  dear  X.,'  "  and  he  proceeded  to 
quote  several  consecutive  sentences  from  a  letter  of  mine  to 
a  friend  abroad,  which  I  thought  were  as  secret  as  if  I  had 
merely  whispered  them  to  the  rustling  foliage  of  a  solitary 
oak.  The  letter  was  registered;  moreover,  I  had  handed 
it  in  and  had  received  the  receipt  for  it  myself.  "How 
did  you  learn  the  contents  of  my  letter?"  I  asked,  after  I 
had  recovered  somewhat  from  my  astonishment.  "  From 
the  Censor  —  a  silly  young  man,"  he  replied.  "You 
should  make  his  acquaintance  and  enlarge  your  gallery  of 
types." 

I  did  make  the  acquaintance  of  the  young  fellow,  who 
lived  in  somewhat  straightened  circumstances,  and  was 
struggling  hard  to  keep  his  head  above  water;  and  I  found 
him  extremely  communicative  over  the  walnuts  and  the 
wine  — a  diversion  of  the  day  which  he  had  not  previously 
been  in  the  habit  of  making.  With  the  utmost  simplicity 
and  blandness  he  told  me  extraordinary  stories  of  intrigues 
and  counter-intrigues,  of  damnable  lies  told  and  mortal 
blows  struck  by  unseen  assassins  whose  consciences  left 
them  untroubled  because  they  never  themselves  actually 
shed  innocent  blood  but  only  sold  it'  to  others.  These 
disclosures  startled  me,  and  for  days  I  kept  recalling  the 
expressions  and  allusions  contained  in  my  previous  letters, 
calculating  the  interpretations  to  which  they  were  open. 
That  such  innocent  allusions  may  be,  and  frequently  are,- 
quite  as  dangerous  as  real  crimes,  I  have  had  ample  and  ter- 
rible proof.  Three  years  ago  a  number  of  grammar-school 
boys  were  arrested  and  put  in  prison  without  knowing  or 
even  conjecturing  what  they  were  accused  of.     The  secret 


1  I  confess  to  having  occasionally  written  letters  to  friends,  knowing  that 
they  would  be  opened  and  read  by  the  authorities,  and  desiring  it,  in  order 
to  save  innocent  men  from  ruin.  Cases  have  also  come  to  my  knowledge 
—  infamous  cases  —  of  men  having  written  apparently  confidential  letters  to 
others  for  the  purpose  of  compassing  their  ruin. 


28-2  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

investigation  was  tedious,  but  when  it  was  completed  the 
juvenile  prisoners  were  set  at  liberty.  Some  time  later,  the 
cause  of  their  arrest  leaked  out.  It  appears  that  one  of  the 
boys  had  written  to  another,  during  the  Easter  holidays, 
enclosing  his  subscription  for  the  "good  cause."  The 
letter  was  intercepted,  read,  and  interpreted  as  a  missive 
from  one  dangerous  conspirator  to  another,  and  the  boys 
were  imprisoned  in  consequence.  The  official  investiga- 
tion established  the  fact  that  it  was  only  a  question  of  the 
regular  annual  subscription  organized  by  the  scholars  for 
the  purpose  of  bribing  the  man  who  had  charge  of  the 
written  examination  papers  to  disclose  them  a  day  or  two 
before  the  written  examination. 

Ihe  Censure  of  spoken  words  and  phrases  and  private  con- 
versations, the  systematic  abuse  of  the  conventional  forms, 
of  social  life,  of  hospitality  and  friendship  for  the  purpose  of 
tempting  men  and  women  to  think  aloud  in  the  presence 
of  living  phonographs  who,  not  content  with  simply  repeat- 
ing, often  exaggerate,  aggravate,  and  even  invent,  the  conse- 
quent air  of  profound  mystery,  the  look  of  mistrust,  the 
attitude  of  fear  with  which  people  converse  together  in  the 
streets  and  public  places  —  these  things  constitute  a  special 
branch  of  the  subject,  which  deserves  a  paper  to  itself. 
The  degree  of  terror  that  lies  at  the  root  of  all  this  can 
readily  be  imagined;  it  has  been  sketched  scores  of  times; 
among  others  by  an  intelligent  Censor  who  enjoyed  the 
confidence  of  two  I'hiiperors,  and  who  in  spite  of  his 
official  position  could  not  refrain  from  exclaiming:  "In 
sober  truth  it  is  a  very  painful  position  for  men  to  be  in 
who,  though  conscious  that  they  never  harl)ore(l  any  crimi- 
nal designs,  and  have  always  led  irrejjroachable  lives 
.  .  .  feel  themselves  daily,  nay,  hourly,  in  danger  of  being 
irretrievably  ruined,  merely  in  consequence  of  a  secret 
denunciation,  of  calumny,  of  misimderstanding,  of  the  bad 
humor  of  others,  or  of  a  false  construction  i)ut  on  their 
words  or  deeds.  Harassed  and  hounded  down  as  they  are, 
it  is  infinitely  better  for  such  men  to  renounce  once  for  all 
their  right  of  living  and  working  —  to  waive  that  right  in 
the  name  of in  whose  name,  O  God?  "  ' 

It  is  a  matter  for  wonder  that  under  the  Upas-like 
shadow  of  the  Censure  any  embodiment  of  thought  has 
been  permitted  to  spring  into  existence,  to  which  by  even 

1  A.  V.  N'ikitenko,  Russian  Antiquity,  March,  1890,  p.  648. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  283 

the  widest  stretch  of  courtesy  the  names  of  literature  and 
science  could  be  applied.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
representatives  of  the  Government  have  been,  and  still  are, 
desirous  of  arresting,  if  possible,  the  very  process  of  inde- 
pendent thinking,  and  at  the  worst  of  confining  it  within 
the  narrow^est  conceivable  limits.  They  rightly  feel  that 
any  presentation,  literary  or  plastic,  of  the  aspects  of  Rus- 
sian life  must,  by  the  very  nature  of  the  subject,  excite 
disgust  at  the  reality;  and  it  is  only  natural  that  the  con- 
clusions of  science  should  appear  quite  as  redoubtable  in 
this  respect  as  the  types  and  forms  of  art  and  literature; 
for  if  the  staff  be  crooked,  its  shadow  cannot  well  be 
straight,  whether  the  intercepted  rays  be  those  of  the  mid- 
day sun  or  the  flickering  light  of  a  tallow  candle.  "  It  is 
my  desire,"  exclaimed  the  Minister  who  at  the  time  was 
Chief  of  the  Censure,  "that  Russian  literature  should 
wholly  cease  to  exist.  Then  at  least  we  shall  have  obtained 
a  definite  result,  and  I,  at  any  rate,  shall  be  permitted  to 
enjoy  unbroken  slumber."  ' 

Bearing  this  avowed  aim  of  the  Government  in  mind, 
one  cannot  affect  surprise  on  learnng  that    innumerable 
works  of  literature  and  science  have  been  either  wholly 
forbidden  or  mutilated  till  they  were  fit  only  for  the  trunk- 
maker's  and  the  pastry-cook's.     There  was  nothing  abnor- 
mal—  judged  by  this   standard  —  in    the    refusal    of    the 
Censure   to    sanction   Count   Uvaroff's  work    on    Grecian 
Antiquities  in  Southern  Russia,  because  the  word  demos  was 
rendered  by  "the  people."     "If  you  wish  your  work  to 
appear,  you  must  change  the  wox^ people  into  'citizens,'  " 
exclaimed  the  Censor,  proud  of  his  ingenuity  and  confi- 
dent of    his  power.-      Not  less  logical  was   the   rigorous 
exclusion  of  the  wox^  progress  from  all  literary  and  scien- 
tific works,   native  and  foreign,   destined  to  circulate  in 
Russia,  owing  to  the  demoralizing  train  of  ideas  which  it 
•is  naturally  calculated  to  suggest;^  and  it  would  be  cruel  to 
reproach  the  Censure  for  considering  a  series  of  full-stops 
following  in  close  succession   as  a  satisfactory  proof   of 

1  Cf.  Xovoye  Vreinya,  14th  December,  1890,  quoting  extract  from  the 
review  Russian  Antiquity,  December,  1889. 

^  Cf.  Nikitenko,  Russian  Antiquity,  March,  1890,  p.  637.  Deliberating 
on  the  advisability  of  employing  the  word  citizens  in  a  book  or  article, 
Saltykoff  condemns  it :  "  It  seems  to  me  that  the  word  '  citizen  "  should  be 
struck  out.'  Just  fancy  what  it  smacks  of."  Cf.  In  the  Midst  of  Moderation 
and  Correcttiess,  p.  170. 

3  Cf.  Russian  Antiquity,  September,  1890,  p.  599. 


284  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND   TERRORS. 

hostility  to  the  Government,  and  an  unanswerable  reason 
for  suppressing  books  and  articles  that  would  otherwise 
have  proved  not  merely  harmless,  but  eminently  beneficial. 
In  England  one  is  tempted  to  scoff  at  these  things;  in 
Russia  they  are  stern  realities  that  draw  forth  tears  of  blood 
from  the  very  strongest  men,  none  of  whom  felt  disposed 
to  laugh  when  Censor  Akhimoff,  mindful  of  his  duty, 
refused  to  sanction  the  publication  of  an  arithmetic,  in 
which  the  rows  of  figures  of  two  problems  were  separated 
from  each  other  by  a  series  of  two  suggestive  dots,  behind 
which  the  wit  of  man  could  not  divine  what  diabolical 
ideas  might  be  lurking.  One  can  scarcely  refrain  from 
speculating  what,  under  such  conditions,  would  have 
become  of  the  irreverent  Aristophanes,  wdth  his  seventy- 
eight  syllabled  words,  of  Rabelais,  with  his  Antipericata- 
metanaparbeugedamphicribyationes  Toordicantium,  or  of 
Dante,  with  his  cabalistic  Rafel  mai  ameck  Zitbi  ahni? 
Surely  their  productions  would  have  been  promptly  chopped 
up  into  little  shreds  on  Holiday  Island,  near  St.  Peters- 
burg, and  they  themselves  —  if  they  had  the  misfortune  to 
be  subjects  of  the  I'sar  —  placed  under  police  supervision. 
That  is  what  happened  to  Shevtschenko,  the  national  poet 
of  Little  Russia,  who  was  forbidden  to  put  pen  to  paper, 
and  who  scribbled  down  some  of  his  most  charming  poems 
with  a  pencil  on  scraps  of  greasy  brown  paper,  which  he 
hid  away  in  his  boots,  for  which,  when  discovered,  he  was 
cruelly  flogged.  It  is  only  a  very  few  years  since  M.  Shel- 
goonoff  was  banished  from  St.  Petersburg  and  threatened 
with  a  similar  or  even  worse  fate;  and  at  this  moment  his 
works  in  two  volumes  are  being  mutilated  in  such  a  manner 
.by  the  Censure  that  he  himself  finds  it  difficult  to  recognize 
them  as  his  own.  Most  of  Count  Tolstoi's  later  writings 
are  on  the  index  of  prohibited  books,  and  nothing  that 
comes  from  his  pen  can  be  sanctioned  by  any  one  Censor, 
no  matter  how  harmless  it  seems.  Every  line  of  his  must 
first  be  laid  before  the  Censure  Committee  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, to  be  read  later  on  by  M.  Pobedonostseff,-and  practi- 
cally nothing  that  he  writes  ever  reaches  the  Russian 
printer.  Even  the  series  of  moral  pamphlets  which  he 
wrote  for  the  i)easantry,  and  being  highly  approved  by  the 
authorities,  went  through  numerous  editions,  are  now  being 
withdrawn  from  circulation  by  the  Censure,  owing  to  a 
letter  on  the  subject  written  to  the  Minister  of  liie  Interior 
by  the  restless  M.  Pobedonostseff,  who  is  shocked  at  their 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  285 

immorality,  while  the  unredeemed  filth  of  the  novels  of 
Alboff  and  of  Zola  is  propagated  like  some  new  and  saving 
gospel. 

In  the  history  of  no  ancient  or  modern  literature  is  the 
chapter  of  might-have-beens  so  long  or  so  full  of  tragic 
interest  as  in  Russia.  Scarcely  more  than  half  the  manu- 
script works  of  the  gifted  Saltykoff  have  seen  the  light. 
Leskoff,  one  of  the  foremost  literary  men  of  the  present 
day,  is  practically  reduced  to  silence  because  he  offended 
the  Director  of  the  Censure,  by  drawing  a  too  faithful 
portrait  of  him  twenty  years  ago.  It  is  almost  as  difificult 
for  literary  men  to  live  on  the  produce  of  their  labors  in 
Russia  as  it  is  for  astrologers  to  "  hitch  their  wagons  to  a 
star "  in  England.  Lately  one  very  respectable  member 
of  the  fraternity  died  of  hunger,  and  some  of  those  who 
are  yet  alive  are  in  fear  of  meeting  a  similar  fate,  while  the 
only  fear  that  possesses  others  is  that  they  may  not  die 
quick  enough.  "Russian  literature,  indeed!"  exclaims 
Saltykoff;  "why  you  may  die  of  hunger  if  you  rely  upon 
literary  work  for  a  livelihood.  I  am  a  living  example 
myself  of  the  fate  that  overtakes  literary  men.  I  do  not 
earn  enough  to  keep  my  old  hack  from  dying  of  starvation. 
No  one  but  an  egregious  fool  would  commit  such  an  inex- 
cusable blunder  as  to  devote  himself  to  literary  work  in 
Russia."  1 

-  One  of  the  most  celebrated  men  of  letters  in  contempo- 
rary Russia,  whose  name  is  favorably  known  in  P'rance, 
Germany,  and  England,  is  at  this  moment  condemned  to 
silence  and  poverty  by  the  Censure.  And  he  has  absolutely 
no  redress,  and  not  the  shadow  of  a  hope  of  better  things. 
Can  he  not  appeal  to  the  Tsar,  English  Radicals  will  ask; 
the  just  Tsar  whose  private  virtues  are  belauded  even  by 
his  enemies?  He  did  so  appeal,  I  reply,  in  a  letter  of 
deeply  respectful  loyalty  and  attachment  which  touched 
his  Majesty's  heart.  This  occurred  some  three  months  ago. 
The  Emperor  called  for  the  Minister  of  the  Interior, 
showed  him  the  letter,  and  inquired:  "Is  this  true?  You 
are  persecuting  X.?"  "Certainly  not,  your  Majesty;  we 
have  employed  no  exceptional  measures  against  him.  But 
I  will  make  strict  inquiries  on  the  subject."  The  Minister 
then  summoned  M.  Fesktistoff,  the  Head  of  the  Censure. 


1  Hist.  Messenger,  October,  1889.     Cf.  Novoye   Vremya,  i?th  November, 
1889. 


286  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

"What's  this  X.  has  been  writing  to  the  Emperor?"  he 
asked.  "  I  hope  you  have  issued  no  exceptional  orders 
against  X.  in  writing?"  "Certainly  not,  your  Excellency; 
I  should  never  think  of  doing  such  a  foolish  thing."  "  No, 
I  thought  not.  All  right.  Order  the  police  to  inform  X. 
that  his  letter  was  read  by  his  Majesty,  and  the  allegations 
it  contains  found  to  be  untrue.  Good  morning."  And  the 
police  duly  informed  X.,  whose  confidence  in  the  sterling 
virtues  of  the  Tsar  was  far  more  lively  than  that  of  the  most 
rampant  Radical  Russophile,  that  his  letter  to  the  luiiperor 

was a  lie.     If  Mr.  Pitt,  having  received  a  complaint 

against  Warren  Hastings  from  the  eunuchs  who  had  been 
tortured  at  Eucknow,  were  to  refer  the  matter  to  the  accused 
for  investigation,  and  having  received  from  him  an  emphatic 
denial,  were  to  inform  the  complainants  through  the  police 
that  they  lied,  we  should  have  a  parallel  to  the  case  of  the 
unfortunate  X. 

The  Director  of  the  Censure  spoke  the  truth  when  he 
said  that  it  would  have  been  foolish  to  issue  written  orders 
against  any  one  writer,  singling  him  out  for  exceptionally 
harsh  treatment.  Eor  there  is  a  comprehensive  law  which 
delivers  up  every  writer  to  the  mercy  of  the  Censors,  so 
that  even  the  just  themselves  may  be  condemned.  Accord- 
ing to  this  law,  a  pamphlet  or  book  being  printed,  the 
form  must  be  instantaneously  decomj'josed,  and  the  type 
distributed,  otherwise  the  inspector  of  printing  offices  is 
empowered  to  take  cognizance  of  the  fact,  and  the  book 
is  then  ipso  facto  and  absolutely  forbidden.  That  is  to  say, 
the  author  and  the  publisher  are  liable  to  be  severely  pun- 
ished because  the  printer  is  not  endowed  with  the  gift  of 
working  miracles.  It  would  be  charitable  to  suppose  this 
law  obsolete,  if  we  had  suppositions  instead  of  facts  to  deal 
with;  but  truth  compels  me  to  afifirm  that  it  is  in  full  force 
at  this  very  moment.  The  last  case  that  came  under  my 
notice  was  that  of  a  book  compiled  by  M.  Shidkoff  and 
l)rinted  by  M.  Pavlenkoff,  of  Moscow,  some  three  years 
ago.  The  inspector  was  purposely  sent  round  the  moment 
the  printing  was  done,  and  he  merely  took  cognizance  of 
the  state  of  the  form,  with  the  result  that  the  large  edition 
of  this  useful  book  is  now  mouldering  away,  and  will  never 
see  the  light. ^ 


1  The  book  was  a  Russian  reading  book  for  schools.    The  real  motive 
for  arresting  it  was  private  animosity. 


THE    RUSSIAN    CENSURE.  28/ 

Few  branches  of  science  are  so  cramped  and  crippled 
as  history,  possibly  because  his  Majesty  himself  plays  at 
historian  to  the  extent  of  taking  the  chair  and  ringing  a 
bell  at  the  meetings  of  an  historical  society  in  the  palace, 
the  secretary  of  which  is  M.  Bytchkoff,  brother  of  the 
infamous  criminal  who  was  deported  to  Siberia  several 
years  ago.  In  M.  Smaragdoff' s  work  on  history,  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  Censure  Committee  noticed  that  a  considerable 
number  of  pages  were  devoted  to  the  life  and  doings  of  a 
certain  "fanatical  vagabond  named  Mohammed,"  and  he 
indignantly  protested  and  insisted  that  they  should  be 
erased  or  the  book  prohibited,  basing  his  demand  on  the 
historico-ethical  ground  that  Mohammed  was  "a  scoundrel 
and  the  founder  of  a  false  religion  to  boot."  ^  One  of  the 
most  gifted  and  conscientious  historians  of  contemporary 
Russia  is  Professor  Bilbassoff,  who  has  spent  the  best  part 
of  a  laborious  life  in  the  patient  study  of  the  published  and 
unpublished  documents  relating  to  the  life  and  times  of 
the  Empress  Catherine  II.  After  years  of  research  in  dark 
libraries  and  dusty  archives  he  completed  the  first  volume 
of  his  Histoiy  of  Catherine  II.  Being  a  large  work  it  was 
printed  without  censure,  but  being  a  book  it  could  not  be 
published  with  the  usual  sanction.  The  term  fixed  in  such 
cases  for  the  deliberations  of  the  Censure  is  only  seven 
days,  but  this  work  remained  there  two  months,  and  with 
the  utmost  difiliculty  was  at  last  authorized.  The  Emperor 
having  since  read  a  portion  of  it,  has  severely  reprimanded 
the  Minister  for  allowing  "my  imperial  ancestors  to  be 
lampooned."  The  second  volume  of  this  history  appeared 
a  few  months  ago,  and  was  kept  eleven  weeks  in  the  Cen- 
sure. A  couple  of  weeks  since  the  secret  fiat  at  last  went 
forth,  the  dream  of  a  scholar's  life  was  dispelled  by  the 
word  of  a  Vandal,  and  a  work  that  would  have  built  up  the 
reputation  of  the  author  on  a  solid  foundation  has  been 
chopped  up  into  little  bits  on  an  island  outside  St.  Peters- 
burg, where  a  book  on  Russian  finances  had  met  the  same 
fate  a  few  months  before.  In  a  biographical  dictionary  of 
Russian  men  of  letters,  now  being  brought  out  by  M. 
Vengheroff,  we  find  under  the  name  "Bakoonin,"  which, 
if  treated  on  the  scale  employed  throughout  the  work, 
should  give  occasion  for  dozens  of  pages  of  critical  and 
biographical  remarks,   the  following:  —  "A  family  which 

1  Cf.  Russian  Antiquity,  May,  189c. 


288  RUSSIAN    TRAITS    AND    TERRORS. 

supplied  the  ranks  of  Russian  culture  with  many  noteworthy 
workers.  Certain  reasons  cotnpel  us  to  defer  writing  any- 
thing more  about  them  until  we  reach  the  end  of  this 
volume." 

In  all  this  written  law  plays  no  important  part.  Even 
secret  circulars  are  superfluous.  A  verbal  command  is  more 
than  sufficient.  Vcrbiim  sat  sapienti.  A  Russian  writer, 
whose  name  1  purposely  withhold,  lest  he  should  be  spirited 
away  like'Madam  Tsebrikoff,  lately  wrote  a  most  interesting 
paper  on  a  series  of  abuses  that  positively  cried  to  heaven 
for  vengeance.  A  faithful  description  of  them  might  well 
betaken  for  an  unpublished  page  of  Dante's  "Inferno." 
The  Russian  writer  narrated  the  facts  in  a  dry  statistical 
style,  the  simplicity  of  which  brought  them  out  in  stronger 
relief.  As  the  Government  had  not  the  remotest  intention 
of  laying  the  axe  to  the  root  of  the  evil,  the  article  was 
forbidden.  The  author  was  poor  and  hungry;  he  had 
written  the  paper  in  the  hope  of  gaining  a  crust  of  bread, 
and  the  Censure,  like  an  unclean  harpy,  had  snatched  it 
from  his  hand  as  he  was  about  to  convey  it  to  his  mouth. 
He  perseveringly  begged  for  indulgence,  but  indulgence 
was  denied  him.  At  last  an  influential  official,  touched 
with  pity  and  intent  upon  extracting  good  from  evil,  told 
him  that  permission  to  publish  it  would  be  accorded,  if  only 
he  would  consent  to  strike  out  a  number  of  the  salient  facts, 
tone  down  all  the  rest,  and  pen  a  few  lines  stating  that  all 
these  horrible  evils  had  been  completely  remedied  by  the 
present  humane  and  provident  Government,  and  that  his 
remarks  had  but  a  historical  interest.  His  own  urgent 
needs  and  despair  of  effecting  any  good  for  the  cause  he 
had  at  heart  compelled  him  to  act  upon  this  advice,  and  his 
article  at  last  saw  the  light.  ''But  a  more  damnable  lie  I 
never  uttered  in  my  whole  life !  "  he  exclaimed,  and  tears 
trickled  down  his  hunger-pinched  cheeks,  tears  of  compas- 
sion for  the  forlorn  wretches  whose  sufferings  he  had  thus 
contributed  to  per])etuate,  as  he  stood  trembling,  talking 
to  me  in  the  cold,  piercing  wind  that  found  easy  ingress 
through  the  threadbare  garments  he  wore;  and  coughing  the 
cough  of  the  consumptive,  he  turned  sadly  away,  saying: 
"A  heavy  sin  lies  on  my  soul.     May  God  pardon  me !  " 

And  yet  his  Majesty  the  Emperor  is  an  honorable  man, 
and  the  Censors  are  all  honorable  men. 

Typogbapuy  by  J.  S.  CusmNG  &  Co.,  Boston, 


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